


Labyrinth

by merryfortune



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Alternate Universe - Labyrinth, Dark Romance, F/M, NaNoWriMo 2020, Out of Character, Sexual References, Surrealist Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 56,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27814009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryfortune/pseuds/merryfortune
Summary: Eirika is the babe with the power.Only she doesn't realise how much responsibility that power - those precious few words - comes with, or that she has it at all, and when she utters the incantation, her brother is whisked away by the Goblin King Valter to immediate regret. Now, she has to race against time to get Ephraim back from his clutches and to do that, she has to navigate the Labyrinth and all the trials, tribulations, and other quirks it comes with.
Relationships: Eirika & Ephraim (Fire Emblem), Eirika & Rennac (Fire Emblem), Eirika/Valter (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Labyrinth

**Author's Note:**

> Since this premise is heavily intertwined with music, by virtue of being a David Bowie film, I figure this link might be helpful to those who enjoy listening to music whilst reading fic: https://open.spotify.com/album/6cvdkUIC4IdBypl9L5Ae74?si=hrHbE5XCTr6zIjtcwbhgdQ (a link to the official Labyrinth album playlist)

In the unfair Goblin City, we lay our scene, a city of grit and grime and from before time. It was of tiny buildings built for creatures barely three feet tall. Crumbling and scungy, of red bricks and hardened, brown mud worn down by brusque winds. Save, of course, for the castle where the Goblin King Valter did rule the wicked roost.

And it would be the Restoration Lady, a Princess, who would be the one to strike against the foul villainy of the Goblin King Valter. Her elegant and swan-like Sieglinde against the most cursed blade of the Goblin King. A duel inside a crucible that boiled over with righteousness and heinousness against one another. 

But it was in green, green fields that a young woman, an older girl, in white would stage her duel. A lizard, grey blue with shingled scales, scuttled by the fences; the water in the lakes that laid nearby, shimmered with the reflection of clouds that could come to pour and drench with a sudden storm. The only ripples on the surface were from where swans swam, dainty but hungry, searching the depths for mites and moss. The girl’s flower crown was unfettered as she faced the eyes of the lizard. It blinked, curious, and she took a step forward.

“Return my brother to me.” she said, her pale face flushed. She breathed so easy despite the pink in her cheeks as she took another step forward. “Through dangers untold,” another step forward, “and hardships unnumbered,” her voice grew steadier, “I have fought my way here to the Castle beyond the Goblin City to take back my brother whom you hath stolen.”

Her eyes are clashing. A blue as blue as the purest sapphire. Her dress fluttered in the wind and she had her courage in her heart and in her head. The bracelet that she never took off for it was far too precious to her glimmered in the lowlight of the cloudy afternoon. As did the shiny ring of her promise on the wrong finger. She was armed with impervious chastity as held her speech on her tongue.

“For my will is as strong as yours,” she declared, still moving forward, a surge like a tidal wave drawing out to the sea, “and my kingdom is as great.”

Thunder rumbled. She is prickled by the foreboding noise and she glanced upwards. Her brow wavered. And her attention taken as she scanned the clouds that moved so ominously through the sky. 

Her head turned the other way. Her brows furrowed and she echoed her statements not to her adversary but to herself. Her foggying memory another rival to herself just as eminent as Kings and tyrants.

“For my will is as strong as yours…” she murmured. “My kingdom is great. Damn.” Her voice sharpened with her cuss.

She exhaled, irritated with herself, through her nose. She pulled out her book, fossicked away in the bag around her hip, blown over by the billowing lengths of her costume dress. She ferreted through it as she muttered to herself as she was unable to recall the next line.

She took a deep breath and with no flourish and without the correct intonation, she read aloud the next line: “You have no power over me.”

Thunder continued to crash against the clouds and skies above. Deep rumbling noises accompanied with toying breaths of wind that tugged at the ribbons that adorned the crown that the young girl wore. She looked up and her hair was batted back by the stirring zephyrs as she looked unto the darkening clouds. A dog barked nearby. Her dog barked nearby.

“Oh, Seth…” she murmured, not exactly rousing but she watched the shaggy beastie jump up onto a stone bench that was bone white, curled in the corners like a foaming ocean’s wave perfect for Aphrodite to rise out of.

A clock chimed next and with its toiling, her nerves were startled more by it than the thunder. She glanced towards it, seeing its stony bricks piled high and triangular through distance foliage that skirted the park that she had made the stage for her ‘duel’. She gasped, eyes widened as she read that great and grandiose clock face.

“Oh, oh, no, Seth, I don’t believe it,” she stammered, “it’s seven o’clock.”

Her dog barked again, completely oblivious to whatever trouble it was that the girl had with the time.

With her heart in her throat, she grabbed at her dress and hitched it up. Her denim blue jeans were now in plain view and she threw herself into the race against time and against the wind.

“C’mon, Seth, come on, we’ve got to go.” she yelled.

Her dog barked and yipped, eager to follow its mistress as she ran for the hills and for a pretty little stone bridge. And that very same lizard, with the hard backed blue-grey scales, continue to watch her and her dog with blank fascination from up on a perch that it had found for itself. The girl ran and ran, fistfuls of her dress and with her dog in tow, doing her best to ignore how her hair flew around as it loosened from the ponytail and how the rain splattered on the ground, cold and icy on this autumn-winter cusp.

With the rain, the streets had emptied. Lamp posts turned on as the girl rounded the corner, still running. The sky had blackened with a sudden dusk. The rain continued to pour on, pelting the ground. Her dog soggy behind her, running at her heel as she crossed the road without looking and taking every shortcut she knew to get home.

Home was a two storey house with white walls and scenic planter boxes. There was a garage to the right of it but the house itself was the true marvel. Immaculate, sprawling lawns and rose bushes. Plenty of room for both a dog and two children to play; an utter monument to adult pride given how groomed it was as well, decorated so lovely with blue-green gables and a crystalline heart in the double front doors. It was a rather dreamy and expensive place to live. 

“Oh, it's not fair…” she grumbled to herself as she let go of her dress.

Home was also a place where her father, a bearded man with a wizened brow, stood in the middle of it, watching how his daughter pranced madly in the rain. He was beyond annoyed that she could not obey her curfews. Despite it being night and it being rainy, he was dressed for work in nice slacks and a prim dress shirt.

He looked down at her, his princess, his Eirika, and shook his head. He muttered something to himself but she couldn’t hear it.

“I’m sorry.” she exclaimed, all whining and the like as teenage girls were want to do.

“Well don’t just stand there,” her father scolded her, “get out of the rain.”

“Okay,” she murmured and she passed a glance to her dog, awful and muddy but happy as happy could be, “come on, Seth.”

“Not the dog.” her father scolded her.

Eirika was scandalised, “But its pouring!” she protested.

“He can go into the garage.” he said. “Go, on get!” He barked at the dog.

Eirika’s shoulders deflated and she pointed towards the garage, “Like Dad said, Seth, into the garage.”

Seth toddled off, obedient. Eirika, meanwhile, huffed and barged past her father, stomping about as she tried to get inside. Her father rolled his eyes and followed her in, displeased immensely with how she dripped pouring rain and was still wearing those silly outfits.

“Eirika,” he said before she could further cross the threshold of their ornate living room, “you’re an hour late, princess.”

“I said I’m sorry!” Eirika spat as she spun on her heel to face her father.

“Please let me finish.” her father cuttingly interjected. “I go out very rarely since you’re mother’s passed on-”

“You go out every weekend.” Eirika protested.

“I just do not want to leave for my work meetings without knowing where you are: safe at home.” Her father was most cross with her.

“Well, I’m here.” Eirika retorted. “Safe, sound, secure but certainly not happy.”

“Eirika…” her father tried to plead with her.

“You know, most parents give their teenagers a little bit more of a leash. Seven o’clock is barbaric compared to how most of my friends are allowed to come slink home at two or three or even four o’clock in the morning. I can handle myself perfectly well, Father.” Eirika retorted.

She spun on her heel again. Water droplets flying around the room and she huffed. She attempted to stomp up the stairs but her brother, the prince and the golden boy, of their little family of three had been drawn downstairs by all the noise and excitement. He stood at the top of the bannister and Eirika scowled at him.

Eirika threw her gaze back towards the stairs, “I’m busy, Father, now, if you would excuse me, I want to go and have a shower. Now run along and go earn that bread for our table.” Eirika said. 

“Do not give me attitude, young lady.” her father snapped but Eirika barely heard him.

“You heard the man,” Ephraim taunted her, “don’t give him attitude, young lady.”

Eirika frowned, growling to herself as she addressed her brother: “Could you please get out of the way, dweebus?” 

“Like you’re one to talk,” he said as he flattened himself against the wall so his sister could pass him by, “you’re sixteen and still playing fairyland and other make believe games.”

Eirika continued to stomp up the stairs, hot faced and sopping wet, “I just can’t do anything right, can I?” she snivelled as she made her escape.

Ephraim continued down the stairs and looked on with pity as their father put his face in his fingers, shaking his head.

“We’ve all been… on edge since Mother passed away…” Ephraim diplomatically offered.

“I know, I know…” their Father agreed woefully and in a tiny voice.

“I can go talk to her once she calms down, if you like.” Ephraim offered. “We might snip and snark at each other but we’re twins. If we can’t have each other, we’ve got no one but only if she’s feeling… civil.”

“I would appreciate that greatly, Ephraim, my boy.” their Father said softly. He patted the top of Ephraim’s head and couldn’t help but think for twins, they looked nothing alike as a boy and girl, but they were probably more alike personality wise than either would want to admit. Still, he was fond for his children as he drew a breath. “I best be going.”

With that, their Father straightened his tie and he played with his beard, trying his best to look presentable once more before finding his wallet and leaving. Upstairs, the sound of the shower did its best to drown out the sound of the thunder and the rain. It was going to be a very wet night from the look of things right now.

Now, Eirika’s room was her haven. Her sanctuary. The only part of the house that was hers and hers alone. It was a childish place but it was also a place of supreme comfort. As a spoiled princess, Eirika valued comfort and familiarity above all else. She also liked order and everything had a special place both in her room and in her heart.

The handmade rag-a-muffin muppet with scarlet felt hair and vermillion fur, white-and-black googly eyes. The ballroom dancer with a painted on face who danced an eternal waltz atop her music box styled like an ornate pergola. The fuzzy, tea brown beastie with a moustache who sat upon her toybox. The various books strewn about, mostly picture books with some harlequin novels inconspicuously hidden amongst them. The diorama of a verdant green labyrinth, all blocky and confusing, on her desk. All these wonderful things and more had a special place in Eirika’s heart and in her room. But it was perhaps the scrapbook with adoring pictures and cut-outs and drawings made by the late and careful hand of her mother that held the most esteemed place of honour. 

“Through dangers untold… and hardships unnumbered… I have fought my way here to the castle… beyond the Goblin City to take back my brother that you have stolen.” Eirika recited not only to herself a pegged dolly with yarn for hair in front pinned to the mirror in front of herself.

Even now, freshly out of the shower, she was still playing make pretend and make believe. She wore fake pearls on her golden, cardboard crown that sat wrongly upon her head. She stared herself down in the mirror, decorated with various photos of her mother and drawings of the Goblin King that they had made together. Her vanity was cluttered with stage makeup and costume jewellery and used tissue boxes and more. Yet it was all so artful in its hoard, perfectly placed and the like.

From said hoard, she plucked a ruby red tube of lipstick. She waved it around in front of herself, as though it were a grim and magical wand, eyes narrowing as sultrily as she could. She puckered her lips and before she could administer this rouge unto her lips, there was a knock on her bedroom door. 

“Eirika?” her brother’s blithe voice called out from behind the wood of her door. “Can I talk to you?”

Angrily, Eirika retubed the lipstick and she tore off her crown, slamming it and her hand down on what little exposed enamelled wood of her vanity there was. She had heard how Ephraim had spoken to their Father and she was furious. There he was again. Acting like an angel to their Father when Eirika had no doubt that in a second, Ephraim would be acting like a devil to her. It was so unfair and Father was never here to see such duplicitous behaviour from his seeming golden boy.

So, with lips left nude, Eirika snapped back: “There’s nothing to talk about.” 

“If that’s what you think.” Ephraim said; Eirika could practically hear him roll his eyes. “Anyways, Father says he’ll be back around midnight, you know.”

He shuffled off since all had been seemingly said and done. Eirika reefed herself from vanity and yelled at her door. She roared at it, holding tight that tube of lipstick and the image of her smug older brother in her mind.

“You really wanted to talk, huh?” she taunted Ephraim from the other side. She twirled on her foot. “Practically tore my door down, knocking and begging.” 

She threw herself on the bed. Ephraim probably hadn’t even heard her. She groaned as she rolled off her stomach and onto her back. She had put herself in a fresh pair of jeans and a red peasant shirt; she hadn’t even had dinner yet so she didn’t see much point in putting on her pyjamas.

But as she hefted herself around on her plush bed, all laden with creamy coloured knitted doonas and the like, she looked up unto her shelving. A barrack for the most knightly of her stuffed animals. A nook for every one and one such nook was empty.

“Orson!” she gasped. She could have fumed as she saw the empty patch of dark coloured room. “Someone has been in my room.” She reefed herself off her bed. “I hate that.”

Her mutters were pointless as she was set upon yet another tempest of her own making. She stormed off down the hall to where her brother’s room was. The door was open and he was lounging on his bed, lazily leafing through some book on physics of all sorts. His eyes flicked up to Eirika and he seemed genuinely befuddled by her sudden and vehement appearance.

“Yes?” he gingerly offered her, blinking.

Eirika searched his room and soon found her precious teddy bear Orson. He was in the compromised position of being propped up on Ephraim’s desk. Where Eirika was a mess, Ephraim was impressively clean. He had schoolwork piled up in neat organisation, those books not in use were what kept Orson propped up in the wings of something cobbled together from bits and pieces of fabric and wire.

Eirika came and grabbed her teddy bear, Orson. She reefed the scaffolding off him, tossing it onto the floor whilst she nattered over her little plush pet. She protectively cuddled him to her side and Ephraim looked scoldingly unto her. He was mildly annoyed by the way his lips bowed.

“I didn’t say you could come in here.” he pointed out. “You always get on my case about going into your room, I want the same courtesy, sis.”

“Then don’t go into my room first then.” Eirika snapped at him, cuddling her teddy bear, rocking him away as though he were a real baby, clutching at him desperately. “What were you even doing with him?” She threw an accusatory glare at Ephraim.

He shrugged, non-committal. “He was helping me with a science project. Nothing too dangerous, I know better than to play with matches and Bunsen burners are basically the same thing. I was trying to create a hang glider. If I’m lucky, on a clear day, he’ll be a perfect little flying fox on the electrical lines. His name is Orville, right? Perfect.” Ephraim cocked a cheeky smirk upon saying that and Eirika was most incensed.

“You are awful.” he said. “I hate you. I hate you!”

Ephraim laughed cynically. “You’re all bark and note bite, Eirika.” he told her. 

“Someone save me, someone take me away from this terrible place!” Eirika bemoaned theatrically.

“Look at you,” Ephraim scolded her, “a regular Truman show, you are. Going around thinking you're the protagonist of some unseen movie. Get a grip, sister dearest.” His sarcasm was acidic.

Outside the windowpane, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. For the briefest second, the white of Ephraim’s bedroom walls were dyed a pale but electric blue. It rained harshly outside. The trees shook and trembled. A constant downpour.

“I’m just a drama queen now, am I?” Eirika retorted. “You want a story? Okay. I’ll give you a story.”

She plopped herself down on the bed with Ephraim. Getting right up in his face to annoy and irk him. It worked as he leaned away from her and all eccentricity and other assorted insanity. Or at least that’s how he saw it as he grimaced.

“Once upon a time,” Eirika began bitterly, “there was once a beautiful young maiden whose family terrorised her. She had a snot-nosed older brother who always took her things and an overly bereaved father who barely paid attention to her as she could only do wrong in his eyes as she never got the good grades or sporting achievements quite like her utter spoilt prince of an older brother. The maiden was practically invisible in the light that her elder brother shone.”

The thunder continued to clang and clash outside. The blue light cast and thrown from the lightning and moonlight was ominous. In it, Eirika rose to her feet gradually. Ephraim simply stared, guffawed by the utter temper tantrum his younger sister was throwing.

“But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with maiden,” Eirika continued to hold onto her precious teddy bear as she now wandered the room, still conjuring her inane fairy tale, and she came to a mirror on Ephraim’s wall, prim and proper, without the decorations like the one that Eirika had in her room, “and he had given her special powers.”

“...What a load of rot.” Ephraim muttered to himself, arms folded but he still let the theatre play out.

“So, one night, when the older brother had been particularly cruel to her, she called for help from the Goblins.” Eirika continued.

_Listen._

The Goblins whom she spoke of became very excited. Waking from their naps, feeling the dry heat of the unfair and grimy Goblin City on their wrinkly, greenish coloured skin. Snot bubbles popped and snoring stopped and eyes opened. Excitement was quick to wreak havoc amongst them and all because Eirika had spoken of them.

Eirika pursed her lips together and made a face in the mirror, twisting her voice to be gross and gutural to match her story, “Say you’re right words, said the goblins,” she said, “and you’ll be free, we’ll take your brother to the Goblin City.”

“Yeah, right.” Ephraim snorted.

The Goblins gasped. Eyes huge. Mouths slackened and full of crunchy, crooked teeth.

“But the maiden knew that the King of the Goblins would keep her brother deep in his castle forever and ever and ever,” Eirika swung around as she spoke, manipulating the fuzzy limbs of her bear up and down to act enslaved like a zombie, “and turn him into a Goblin. And so the maiden suffered in silence.” Her voice rasped to nothingness.

Eirika stared right at Ephraim. She let the silence drag out for the sting but Ephraim was largely unimpressed but Eirika was a good actor. There was real and genuine frenzy in her eyes. It was freakish, actually. But all she wanted was to provoke him. Get something past that cold look in his eyes. Eirika licked her lips and she continued her story.

“That was,” her voice was eerily quiet, “until one day, when the young maiden was tired after a long day of rain and mistreatment, she could no longer stand it.”

“You’re a brat, Eirika.” Ephraim told her, unamused. 

“I’ll say the words!” Eirika suddenly threatened, voice going high only to shake her head. “No, I mustn’t.” She tutted to herself, toying with the ears of her teddy bear. 

“You’ve been nothing but a brat since the day you were born.” Ephraim insisted flatly.

“I mustn’t say…” Eirika teased, high and mighty, nose in the air.

The Goblins gasped. What naugthy things to say about _their_ mistress. But what excellent things that their mistress was about to say. Looking around each other, each as hideous and ugly as the last, they were all exciting. Hopping and bouncing on the feels of their three-toed, three-clawed foots. 

“I wish… I wish…” Eirika began to chant, feeling ethereal but looking it not so much.

“Listen,” a Goblin in the gobbledygook rasped, “she’s going to say it!”

“Say what?” another Goblin groped.

“Shut up.” a third Goblin piped up and others around it shushed the second Goblin.

“Sorry…”

“Listen. She’s going to say the words.” the gobbledygook Goblin said, firmly and with a decisive nod of its shaggy little head.

“I can bear it no longer,” Eirika continued to threaten the utterly bemused Ephraim and his blank, blank stare, “Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be, take this brother of mine far away from me!” Her voice was loud. Loud enough to shake cobbled stone and assorted slime.

Ephraim stared at her. Brow quirked and his lips stern.

The Goblins muttered, disappointed, to themselves. “That’s not it,” they groaned, “where’d she learn that rubbish? It doesn’t even start with I wish.” they lamented.

“Are you done yet?” Ephraim asked. “Got all the feelings out and done with?”

“Oh, I wish I did know the words to make the goblins take you away.” Eirika snarked.

In a sing-song and rather hopeful voice, a Goblin piped up, “I wish the Goblins would take you away right now,” it said, “that’s not hard, is it now, huh?”

And yet despite being in different times, different spaces, different dimensions, Eirika felt that sing-songy voice. She heard it not with her ears but with her soul. With her heart. Her blue eyes widened and she would have the last laugh with her brother yet. 

“I wish…” Eirika murmured, her voice ghostly and dropped. “I wish…”

“Did she say it?” asked a particularly slow and particularly elephant-nosed Goblin, only to be shushed.

But Eirika gave up. She lowered her gaze and her brother smirked. That’s what he thought.

“Just stop touching my stuff, dweeb-lord.” Eirika snapped at him.

“Stop getting pissy over nothing then.” Ephraim snapped back.

Eirika flounced about but off she went with her little teddy bear, too. Or at least that’s what Ephraim thought as she charged about on, only she stopped in the doorway. Her curtain of blue hair nice and blow dried down her back, she cast a glare over her shoulders, cold as ice.

“I wish the Goblins would take you away,” she said cuttingly and she touched the lightswitch by Ephraim’s door, “right now.” She turned off his light and turned her back on him.

“Hey-!” Ephraim shouted but his voice was cut off suddenly.

Eirika was in the corridor but it was very distinct. Her ever smart-alecky problem of a brother would never be content with just a Hey. Plus, she reasoned to herself, a sickly feeling in her stomach as she pressed her weight back onto the balls of her feet to retrace her steps, he wasn’t good with voices like she was. He couldn’t even do something so simple as switch between volumes mid-sentence, let alone mid-word or mid-syllable.

Eirika’s heart wrenched. Something was wrong. Something was… very wrong.

Eirika looked back over her shoulder and moved slowly as she approached her older brother’s room once more. Lightning flashed but she couldn’t hear the thunder. It lit up her face, blue and eerie as she drew in closer to his white painted door frame. She couldn’t even hear the rain. It was so peculiarly silent. Eirika peered into Ephraim’s room and her mouth dried.

“Ephraim?”

Nothing. Just pure silence in the darkness. Eirika’s heart raced. She was being pranked. That had to be it but she drew in her further. Uncertain and tentative.

“Ephraim?” Eirika attempted to prompt him again. “Are you alright?”

His bed was empty. His carpet was empty. The whole of his room was empty. Merely awash in that spectral blue light. Despite how quiet the rain was, it was still raining. The moonbeams shattered through the droplets, illuminating the still bedroom. Nothing moved. Nothing except for the mobile on Ephraim’s ceiling. The only remnant to indicate that he had ever had a childhood. Knights and dragons on little wooden pieces suspended, moving circularly and Eirika didn’t think that it had been the wind to have touched it. To have set it in motion.

Eirika glanced at the light switch and tried to toggle with it. A click when pushed above; a click when pushed below. Useless. It was useless. There wasn’t even so much as a flicker as the fluorescent ceiling light refused to turn on. And so dark it remained in Ephraim’s room.

“Ephraim, where are you hiding?” Eirika called out to him, irate but only with a smear of bravado. “If you’re trying to scare me, okay, you win.”

Still there was nothing.

That nothingness urged Eirika onwards. Into the darkness, she skulked. Trying to remain as strong and stalwart as she could, hiding wounds of cowardice. Maybe she had said things she regretted. Maybe she had said things that she felt guilty about but as she walked, so slow and so rueful, into the room, there was only nothingness, only darkness, only silence. It didn’t seem like some mean older brother’s ruse to rile up his gullible little sister. Not anymore at least.

He had to be hiding under the bed. Or in his closet. But Eirika’s eyes were drawn back to his bed, where it was laden with moonlight and the shadows of rain; where the white curtains almost reached out to touch him. Her heart pounded in her throat. Everything was so eerily still until it wasn’t.

Something jerked and wriggled about under his thick sheets. Giggling and gurgling. The bed shook and trembled. When Eirika steeled herself and ripped at the bed, she found nothing amiss. Nothing under the sheets, nothing under the bed. A whole lot of nothing had never been worse in her eyes.

Sharp claws started to rattle and scrape against the glass windowpane. Eirika jumped out of her skin. Spooked, she dropped her teddy bear and she felt tremors in her hands. Despite all warning throbbing inside of her, she turned to face the commotion and the winds began to gust. She saw something crawl vertical and horizontal on the panes. A lizard. Large. Unnaturally so. Its claws were huge and its scales were jagged. Its eyes gleamed, sinister and unreal, a peculiar hue of blue with slitted black pupils.

Eirika felt as though it were staring right at her as it scratched at the windowpane. Behind her, she heard more laughter. Hollow and cheery and ringing through the rooms all playful but her heart raced terrified. Eirika whipped her head around, trying to follow the noises but she was always a second or two too late. 

Closet doors opened and slammed. Books on the shelf fell off completely unprompted. Eirika kept looking around but all she got was naught. Naught but the sound of that terrible, terrible chuckling. At the window, the lizard still beat and clawed at the glass pane. The lock on the windowpane rattled and shook until it was fit to burst from how the lizard pounded at it behind it.

Gasping and turning, Eirika could start to see strange things in her periphery. They were tiny but hideous. Infesting the corners of the room, rummaging through Ephraim’s things with reckless glee. The lizard continued to desperately beg and scratch at the window, catching Eirika’s attention the most.

Confusion reached its fever pitch and the windows burst open at long last. Wings upon the lizard’s back flared. It flew through the room. Not a lizard but a dragon, Eirika realised with all impossibility. Its wings were skeletal and leathery, like bat wings but it beat them hard and violent. It swooped at Eirika, swiping around the room with how it flew so shoddy. 

Eirika put her arms over head to protect herself but the dragon flew off. It attacked her no more. Against the bright of the crystal blue moon, shadow crept along the floor. Tall and beautiful. The curtains billowed and batted about as a strong gale began to blow. Rain scattered on the floor and Eirika slowly lowered her guard. Her eyes widened as she found herself directly in the lunar visage of him. The Goblin King Valter.

Oh, he was magnificent. Elegantly and elaborately magnificent. Simultaneously the most beautiful and the most hideous creature to walk the Earth. He was a giant among men and among Goblins. All large chested and broad shouldered, an arm would be but a twig for him to snap. His face chiselled harsh from tarnished marble, he was flecked with scars. His nose hooked and sharp. His lips stern and wide. His hair was long, rolled down his back in greasy, cobalt waves. He wore all the fineries befitting to a King hailing from a land of ruin and retch. Purple and green regalia, hints of smouldered gold and burgundy, refined in the way an organised garbage dump was refined. 

Eirika trembled with disbelief. He couldn’t be. (Of course he was.) It was all so confronting, she stood in the image and shadow of the one and only. Her one and only. Winds whipped and howled. The rain pelted all that it could hit without mercy. And he was as still as a statute and twice the marvel.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” Eirika spoke, her voice was on the cusp of a breath but she wasn’t afraid. Not even as she gazed into those eyes as dark as the abyssal night. “You’re the Goblin King.”

He merely cocked his head to the side, revealing sharp teeth of yellow in an edgy smirk. Amused greatly by such proclamations of Eirika’s.

“I want my brother back, please, if it’s all the same.” she said.

“What’s said is said.” the Goblin King replied, diplomatic but folding his arms. His voice was deep and gravelly like tar. Thunder rumbled in the distance but sounded like it was getting closer.

“But I didn’t mean it.” Eirika denied.

“Oh? You didn’t?” the Goblin King inquired, most malicious.

“Please, where is he?” Eirika begged, tears beginning to form in her eyes.

“You know very well where he is.” the Goblin King tutted.

Eirika shook her head and she took a step forward, tears streaking down her cheeks, “Please bring him back.” she begged again. “Please.” Her heart was breaking.

“Eirika,” the Goblin King said, taking a step forward of his own, meeting Eirika midway, “go back to your room. Play with your toys and costumes. Forget about that minnow, your brother.”

Eirika took a breath, her tears silent. “I can’t.” she whispered.

“I’ve brought you a gift,” the Goblin King said, changing the topic, and with a flourish of his black gloved hand.

In the tips of his fingers, an orb materialised. As fragile as a bubble and yet it solidified, turning to glass or crystal. Within its curves, skewed slightly iridescent, the mirrored sights of Eirika and the Goblin King’s surroundings appeared. The walls of Ephraim’s bedroom, his curtains, and the moon all encapsulated in the sphere with immaculate clarity.

Eirika stared. Entranced. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a crystal, nothing more.” the Goblin King told her as he began to play with it. He was dexterous and nimble. Not dropping the crystal ball once as it rolled along his forearm, danced through his fingers, and spun on his palm. It was mesmerising to watch and Eirika did so intently. “But,” the Goblin King finally piped up to his hypnotised darling, “if you turn it this way and look into it that way, it’ll show you your dreams.” As he spoke, he still toyed with it and Eirika still watched every fluid movement it made. “But this is not an ordinary gift for an ordinary girl unsatisfied with how she lacks her own light.”

Eirika’s stare became a glare. The Goblin King held the crystal ball tight and still in the apex of his fingertips once more.

“Do you want it?” he finally offered it to her, reaching out a little bit farther.

Eirika could see her own reflection in its surface. Distorted. She looked pale and pathetic.

“Then forget about your brother.” he said.

Eirika was silent. The Goblin King’s arm did not waver as he waited for her response. The crystal glinted, strangely innocent in the dark and in the hands of a villain. Until finally, Eirika shook her head.

“I can’t.” she admitted in a teeny tiny voice. She sniffled and her voice became louder as she spoke again. “It isn’t that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but I want my brother back. He is my twin. If we can’t have each other, we’ve got no one.”

“He’s right there, in my castle, you dim girl.” he snarled.

Eirika crept closer to the window. A slight skip in her step as she looked out and beyond the sprawled suburbia of her neighbourhood. She saw none of it. The trimmed hedges, the fallen rain, the identical houses. No, she saw something else. Something much grander and much greater than something so dreary as a cookie cut gated community.

The skies were orange and drought-like. Streaky grey clouds like bruises in the burnt umber backdrop. Below, a labyrinth sprawled infinitely over terraced mountains. Confusing and mind boggling in intricacy and perimeter. Gigantic, clay walls were put up throughout it all. And then the Castle. A flag at its highest parapet waved but other than that, it was a sandy speck in that impossible distance.

“Do you still want to look for him?” the Goblin King Valter asked as Eirika stared, numbed by the detailing.

“Is that the Castle beyond the Goblin City?” Eirika asked, a dry wind toyed with her hair.

Eirika turned around and she saw the Goblin King, behind him - behind them both - was a backdrop of dry bone lands and an orange sky. Tussled by the wind and glaring.

“Turn back, Eirika.” the Goblin King warned her. “I expected more of the one I sought to tame but you are disappointing me. Turn back before it’s too late, my minnow.”

“I can’t. Don’t you understand that I can’t?” replied Eirika.

“What a pity.” the Goblin King shook his head.

“It’s not that far.” Eirika said, mustering up some courage, however false, as she gazed back out to the labyrinth in all its infinity. It was so very intimidatingly vast.

“It’s farther than you think.” the Goblin King told her quietly, coming in close to her, leaning over her so that his face was beside Eirika’s.

Eirika shivered. His voice was ghastly but she wanted to hear more and more of it regardless.

The Goblin King sighed. He pulled his head up and Eirika felt timidly relieved as she no longer felt his dark, shadowy presence over her. The wind still blew, hard and hot on them both as the Goblin King looked away from it. On a blackened tree, a blackened clock hung with a pale face. Its numbers were elegant and gothic. 

“You have thirteen hours in which to solve the Labyrinth before your twin brother becomes one of us forever.” he declared. His strong voice turned to a purr as he tapped the side of his face. “But fear not, you won’t be entirely parted with him as you will join the kingdom too, as my bride. Again, forever and for all eternity. It’s not that long.”

Eirika looked at him pathetically. He let the moment hold linger. Forever. That was a bit daunting, she thought to herself and the Goblin King nodded. He did not bade her goodbye. Merely gave her the time limit as a farewell before disappearing. Growing faint in the gusts, dissipating into the dusty aether of this bizarre world from which he hailed. Eirika swallowed but she had her quest.

She looked out once more to the whole of the Labyrinth, awed by how titanic a structure it was before setting down the dirt hill. She had to get going. Carpe diem and the like. For Ephraim. And so she skidded down the sand that glimmered with shards of glass, through the sparse strands of tall grass, and came down to the other side. 

Overhead, the orange sky began to shift. Unlike what Eirika expected, the Underground was not a place of perpetual twilight. Nor was it a place of perpetual burning sunrise. The skies began to lighten as she passed twisted trees and knotted grass, coming down to flatter grounds where the Labyrinth edged and skirted the rest of these hinterlands as the morning sun caused the skies to pale and become almost bearable.

At where Eirika stood on the flatter grounds, here, the Labyrinth walls were much taller than Eirika had thought they would be. They were thicker, too, stricken with dying ivy and other weeds. Little garden features were totted about here and there, abandoned in the orange haze but someone else was down here, Eirika soon realised but she heard him first. A tinkling noise hitting water in a scungy pond.

At the plated edge of this pond, a small man, about three foot or so, stood, feet hips’ width apart. He was wearing a cloak which might have been a purple colour once but was very faded now with big boots underneath, laced up tight. Over his shoulder, he wore a rucksack of leather with intricate carvings on the surface. He had hair the colour of dirty straw pulled back into a stubby, side swept ponytail. All in all, bouncing on the heel of his foot, he seemed rather jolly, humming a cheery little tune to himself as well and Eirika came to the stark realisation that she was watching this jovial little man urinate.

“Excuse me?” Eirika prompted this person.

“Oh, uh, excuse me!” he exclaimed.

He was quick to zip himself back up and got his fingers caught in the fly as he was startled that someone had approached him and now wished to speak with him. He turned around, toddling about and Eirika was surprised by what a leathery face this man had. She was even more surprised when his expression turned dour with a voice to match.

“Oh.” he said, unamused and maybe even irritated. “It’s just you.”

Eirika tried not to be offended so she leaned in, “Excuse me,” she continued, “but I have to get through this Labyrinth. Can you help me?”

The man - the dwarf - grunted as he bent down to pick something up. He seemed rather intent on ignoring Eirika but before either of them could ignore or be ignored, their attentions were pilfered away by the most captivating sight. At first Eirika had thought it was a butterfly and what a lovely little butterfly it was with monarch blue wings and delicate antenna but it wasn’t. It was a fairy: a tiny, little winged human with a cherubic face and ecstatic smile.

“Oh,” Eirika exclaimed, “how sweet.”

The dwarf grunted and he angled the implement that he had picked up before. He toddled along, following the looping and flitting path of the fairy. He gave its arrowed base a pump and a great gust of air was blown through the tube of the implement. The little fairy was blown straight against the wall. Smashed to bits by the impact, dropping to the ground just like the insect that it was.

“Ha! Fifty-seven.” boasted the Dwarf. He kicked the fairy, covered it with dirt, giving it an indecent burial barely befitting the wonder of it - at least in Eirika’s indignant opinion.

Eirika gasped, “How could you?!”

She rushed over to aid the little blue thing. It struggled on the ground, its leg twisted all wrong and its wings were battered about with holes and other wounds. It looked up at her with all the woe in the world, Eirika’s heartstrings tugged. She cupped the tiny creature in her hands.

“You poor thing…” she murmured… right before it sank its needley teeth into her.

She exclaimed in brief pain and dropped the creature. Uncertain of what to do - and with the Dwarf moving onto his next extermination job in all likelihood - Eirika abandoned the fairy in favour of catching up with the Dwarf.

“It bit me.” she told him.

The Dwarf bobbled his head about sarcastically, “What did you expect a fairy to do?” he asked, acidic.

“I thought they did nice things, like… Like granting wishes.” Eirika replied, a touch embarrassed. 

“Hmph. Shows what you know, don’t it?” the Dwarf grunted.

He kept toddling along with his brassy instrument. Hunting down the fairies that made their homes and nests along this sector of the Labyrinth. They flitted about and tried to hide but the Dwarf had a keen eye and an even better hand. Pump after pump, he continued to fell fairies despite how Eirika watched, most incensed.

“You’re horrible.” she cried out as he did his job.

“Huh? No I’m not.” he replied. He turned around and he pointed to himself with his thumb. “The name ain’t horrible. It’s Rennac. And who’re you?”

“Eirika.”

Rennac nodded decisively. “And that’s what I thought.”

Rennac chuckled to himself. The count that he was keeping steadily increasing one by one. Eirika continued to tail him, her skin crawling every time she heard the pump of the implement make that clunking noise of its.

“Do you know where the door to the Labyrinth is?” Eirika asked.

“Maybe.” Rennac replied, noncommittal and guttural.

“Well where is it?” Eirika asked.

Rennac grumbled to himself as he gave the fairy that he had been followed a double pump to fell it. He exclaimed with glee - “Sixty!” - when it fell to the ground.

“I said. Where is it?” Eirika vehemently insisted, cutting off Rennac’s celebration of his sixtieth hunt.

“Where is what, princess?” Rennac snarled.

“The door.” Eirika snapped.

“What door?” Rennac snapped back.

Eirika huffed. “It's useless asking you anything.”

“Not…” Rennac piped up, still toddling along. “If you ask the right questions. Or, you know, set the right tone…”

Eirika furrowed her brow and crept along closer on Rennac’s fairy hunt. She licked her lips and a thought came to her mind.

“Okay then,” she murmured, “how do I get into the Labyrinth?”

Rennac turned around and that’s when Eirika realised how startlingly gold they were. They were just that little bit wild and mad.

“Ah, that’s more like it, though nothin’ a coin wouldn’t solve either.” Rennac replied. “You get in… there.”

Eirika was about to rouse on Rennac. She might have following him along with the same, hunched over, staggered pace but she was still keeping an eye on things. Every inch of the Labyrinth’s walls were the same. Tall and miserable, an iron black-grey with sometimes a sprawled staple of dying ivy or other weather damage but it was all sameness to her. But when she followed the arrow’s line of Rennac’s clawed finger, she was amazed.

A set of double doors opened up in the Labyrinth. Flowers bloomed unwilling atop its entrance, on the thick branches of a dying tree entrapped on the surface of the double doors. The petals the faintest pink that there could be and Eirika gasped. They shimmered but she wasn’t sure what with. Crystals? Fairy dander? Or something else but it was something magical regardless. Smoke, gauzy and almost bluish hued, bumbled out from behind the open doors, obscuring what laid beyond their contents. 

“You, uh, really going in there?” Rennac asked as Eirika approached the open doors with graveness in her demeanour. 

The smoke dissipated and Eirika caught glimpses of suffocating walls caked with green moss. Tiny bricks stacked upon another tightly. And only two options: left or right.

Eirika looked over her shoulder, back towards Rennac, and she nodded, “Yes.” she affirmed him, grim. She glanced back to the Labyrinth. “I’m afraid I have to. To right the wrong that I’ve inflicted on Ephraim.”

She didn’t wait for Rennac to say anything more in case he wished to discourage her. And so, she stepped into the Labyrinth. Her heart hammered in her chest as she uncertainly looked for danger as she stepped into the stony realm of the Labyrinth. She peered left and it was endless. Straight as straight could be, with sticks poking out and that’s all there was. Then she choked right. Just as eerie as its opposite, it was endless as well, the only difference were the obelisks attached to the parapets of the Labyrinth’s walls.

“Cosy, isn’t it?” Rennac said behind her, leaping out and hoping to frighten her. And he did.

Eirika jumped as Rennac made his appearance on the inside of the Labyrinth. She was so sure he would simply continue to meander along the outside, hunting the fairies.

Rennac laughed having spooked Eirika. “Now,” he said, coming down from his mean-spirited high, “would you go left or right?”

“They both look the same.” Eirika told him.

“Well you’re not going to get very far.” Rennac scoffed at her.

“Which way would you go, then?” Eirika asked.

Rennac shrugged. “Me? I wouldn’t go either way.”

“If that’s all the help you’ll be…” Eirika muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Do you know your problem?” Rennac asked, puffing his chest out. “You take too many things for granted. He poked Eirika’s belly as he said that.

Eirika didn’t know what to say to that so she just pouted with a furrowed glare. Rennac shook his head as he plodded along ahead, arms spread out.

“Take this Labyrinth for instance,” he said, “even if you get to the centre, you’ll never get out again.”

“That’s your opinion.” Eirika replied as she strode forth, unaffected. This was prattling she didn’t have time for.

“Well it's a lot better than yours!” Rennac spat.

“Thanks for nothing, Randal.” Eirika seethed.

The Dwarf growled, “My name is Rennac!” He pointed menacingly at her. “And don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Rennac groaned again and trotted off in a huff. He disappeared through the entrance doors of the Labyrinth. When his boot hit the dirt again, the iron doors slammed shut. Loud and tight. The banging, clanging noise echoed through the Labyrinth. Eirika shivered, looking that way and realising with utter clarity that she was trapped in the Labyrinth now well and good. 

Eirika took a breath and a moment to compose herself. She willed her beating heart to still in her chest as she pressed her hand, cold, to her face, hot. She glanced at the doors one last time and no change. Still ominous and tall and wrought with iron and tree branches. Only it was silent now. She knew she had no time to tarry so she continued down the right path, watched by the eyes inside the moss on the walls.

She walked confidently, as confident as she could be, and was thankful for her slip-on loafers. Anything was better than nothing as twigs snapped underfoot and she felt grains of sands in her shoes as well. She dodged stray branches and stepped around cracks but it was the same thing over and over again. Seemingly endless miles of the very same stretch of the Labyrinth and it was so peculiar. It was all stragglingly straight from here on out. No corners, no turns to be made. Just the same path, straight and narrow. It just went on and on. 

After walking like this for ten, maybe even twelve or thirteen, minutes, Eirika gave up. She sighed, irritated, to herself and took a moment to breathe. Her back against the far Labyrinth wall to her right and she resisted the urge to sink to the ground. But instead she looked on and she thought once more about what Rennac had said. It didn’t make sense but what if, she breathed, what if she was taking it for granted like he said that she was.

Eirika straightened herself up again. Shoulders aligned to either side of the Labyrinth walls, so dark and miserable. She sucked in a deep breath and whilst she never made the track team quite like Ephraim did, she gave herself a toed push start and launched herself down the path. She ran and ran, dodging bits and pieces of debris on the dirt and the like. Her hair flounced about as she ran with an easy, if uneven pace through the corridor of the Labyrinth.

But such a good feeling was quick to ruin in these ruins. The scantest bits of green grass growing below mocked her as the more she ran to that horizontal distance down the Labyrinth’s corridor, the further away from her she got. Until she ran out of breath, panting, and until she ran out of patience with herself. She stopped again and banged her hands on the Labyrinth walls, annoyed and irate. It was then that she gave into that sinking feeling before.

Back to the wall, she came down to her bottom. She slid past the yellow moss that grew long, tangling eyes and sat in the mire of the bricking. She pawed at her face, annoyed, scolding herself for being a fool. 

She was quite the poor thing, thought the Worm beside her who piped up with a wavering, “H-Hewwo.”

Eirika blinked as she searched for the face belonging to the squeaky voice. The tendrils of the eyed moss moved with her in an equal, if slower search. Looking unto the same height as her shoulder, she found the Worm. But surely, she thought, mouth slack, eyes glancing elsewhere, the Worm could not have been the one to have spoken. 

“Did you say… hello?” Eirika asked, unsure.

The Worm nodded. She was a cute little thing, clunky and chunky, with a creamy-yellow underbelly and magenta fur. She had a fearful but friendly expression in her huge pink-brown eyes. Wrapped around her furred forehead, she wore a yellow-and-brown bandanna. 

“Y-Yes,” the Worm stuttered out, “I said hello. W-Well, I meant to say “hello” but I stuttered and, um, said “hewwo” instead. Thank you for noticing me. A-And for not making fun of me for stuttering.”

“No problem.” Eirika said.

The Worm smiled a wonky smile. It was sweet and yellow.

“You’re a worm, aren’t you?” Eirika asked.

“I’m a Neimi, actually.” she replied.

Eirika nodded. “I’m an Eirika, it is good to meet you, Neimi.”

“Ch-Charmed, I’m sure…” Neimi murmured.

“Now, Neimi,” Eirika began, “do you by any chance know the way through this Labyrinth, do you?”

“Who? Me?” Neimi stammered. “N-No, I’m just a Worm… A Worm named Neimi…”

“Oh.” Eirika replied, deflating immediately with drooping shoulders and palpable disappointed.

“H-How about you come inside…? Meet the mister, Colm… H-Have a spot of tea…” Neimi murmured. She jerked her head to the side, indicating behind the bricks where Neimi was perched altogether.

Eirika smiled fondly but shook her head. “No,” she replied, soft, “but thank you for inviting me. I have to solve this Labyrinth, is all, but there aren’t any turns or openings or anything. It just goes on and on and...”

Neimi looked around. Her movements were smaller than she was and incredibly uncertain. Her eyes glimmered.

“R-Really?” she murmured. “Hm, to me it's full of openings and turns a-and so many scary things like that.”

“Well, where are they then?” Eirika asked.

“O-Oh, um, there’s one right there… b-but its the sc-scariest one of them all…” Neimi murmured.

Neimi lurched her head forward and Eirika followed suit. Only to have confusion lay upon the wall like moss when she looked at the same place that Neimi was looking. The Labyrinth wall across from them, in Eirika’s eyes at least, remained unchanged. Simply daunting and all the same as it had been in the commiserating moments of before.

“I don’t understand,” Eirika lamented, “there’s nothing there.”

“I-I’m sorry.” Neimi murmured. “I shouldn’t have, um, said anything. I-Is there anything I can do to make it up to you? Like I make good barley tea, I swear… it’s one of my, um, few redeeming qualities.”

“Thank you for offering but I really have to be going. I just don’t know… where. There isn’t even an opening.”

“B-But it's right there!” Neimi squealed. “T-Try going through it, I promise. You’ll, um, see - see what I mean.”

Neimi might have been small but her voice was piercing. With nothing to lose, Eirika figured she might try going straight through since it was better wandering aimlessly. So, she got up with shaky, knocking knees. She uncertainly approached the section of wall that Neimi seemed so frightened by. There was a dark, brownish stain on it, she noticed and a half-hearted curtain of leafed ivy, too.

Eirika turned around, “Are you sure?”

Neimi nodded but squealed, terrified and pith. 

“That’s just a wall. There’s no way through.” Eirika insisted although her voice was airy so as to not offend Neimi.

“B-But that’s the thing…” Neimi quibbled. “Th-Things aren’t always quite what they seem in this bad, bad place. So, um, you can’t take anything for granted.”

That was twice now that someone had said that to her. Thrice if she included the time that she had said it to herself. Numbers sometimes had mystical meanings and her Mother always told her good things happened in threes so Eirika lifted her hands. She reached out to the wall, taking uncertain steps closer to it, ready for her toe to hit the bottom bricks. 

But her toes never did - and neither did her fingertips grasp the top layer bricks. The closer she got, the more the Labyrinth changed. She found a gap between where she stood and where the Labyrinth walls stood. A turn to the left in between. She beamed to herself, ready to be on her merry way but Neimi called out to her again.

“H-Hey!” she squealed. “Hang on!”

Eirika reared back, still smiling brightly, “Oh, yes,” she said, grateful, “thank you so much for your help, Neimi. This is incredibly wonderful.”

“B-B-But don’t go that way.” Neimi cried tearfully with little wormy, caterpillar tears.

“Pardon?” Eirika blinked.

Neimi looked surprised - and terrified - for have Eirika to have come back so quickly. She trembled on the little brick nook that she was perched on. Her eyes drooped downwards.

“I, um, said not to go that way…” she murmured. “Y-You should, um, n-never go that way.”

Eirika glanced back down to the direction that she wanted to go and then the other way. Sure enough, just as there was a new path to the left, there was one to the right as well to match. Jagged and blocky, hidden mostly from view but there it was.

“Oh, thanks.” Eirika replied. “I appreciate all your help, Neimi.”

“Ta-ta.” Neimi said.

Her wriggly, wormy tail bade Eirika goodbye and Eirika nodded. She was swift to be on her way. This time, she made her cheerful descent to the right and not to the left like she had initially been planning, putting a big smile on Neimi’s face. What a good little samaritan she was. After all, had Eirika kept going that way, she would have gone straight to the Castle and that was a big no-no given that the mad and terrifying Goblin King inhabited the Castle. Chuffed, Neimi wormed her way back into her burrow behind the bricks where her family awaited.

Eirika, meanwhile, happened upon a deeper part of the Labyrinth.

Here, it was grecian in design. Obelisks dotted the walls, tall and menacing. The walls had lightened in colour, more of a clay brown than a rusted iron ore black. The bricks that they were made of were larger, like cubic boulders all piled mathematically and neat upon one another, some carved with signs and incantations that meant very little to a human like Eirika. A few of the walls even donned hedges that were a lively green, not a dying brown. Others were hatted at the corners by perfectly sanded down orbs of clay.

Not to mention, the sunrise of earlier had given way to a more pleasant morning. The skies had given way from a urine yellow to a far more stellar blue. Things were looking up, Eirika thought as she twisted and turned through this next neck of the Labyrinth. She felt good as she sent herself flying through the Labyrinth with light footsteps, exploring every bow and bend trying to get to the other side.

She paused at a four way intersection bedecked with the most peculiar sculpture. It was tall. Taller than the walls that cascaded around it. It, too, was another obelisk again like the ones that dotted the landscape of the Labyrinth but rather than being void and soulless, it had too many souls. All trapped within the weathered and carved down sandstone it was constructed from. Hands of many different shapes and sizes which all pointed this way and that. Many pointed directions not even physically existing in the area around it but Eirika observed it regardless. Fingering along the crevices of the different fingers, honing in on a monstrous paw that pointed to what she was going to assume was a north-easterly direction.

Stuck in the middle of this endless and most confusing Labyrinth, any advice was good advice, Eirika reason so she set off in that direction. Moving through the walls once more, Eirika continued on her way only to hear strange things as she settled down another clay corridor. She could swear she heard her brother’s voice. And he was calling her name.

“Erika…? Eirika…? Eirika!”

He sounded like he was in dazed distress. Eirika’s heart jumped to her throat as she pressed on around the corner, half expecting to see her brother and half expecting the Goblin King. But when she turned that corner, she got neither of those things but it was the barest, scantest relief. All she saw, looking up, was the Goblin Castle looking like a wasp’s nest against the blue sky, high up on that terraced mountain where it sat.

“I’m coming for you Ephraim,” Eirika quietly vowed to herself as she continued her trek onwards, “I promise.”

And Ephraim took cold comfort in knowing that his twin sister was on his trail as he sat at the feet of the Goblin King himself. Ephraim was a prisoner. He knew that well, but he wasn’t sure what kind. After all, he hadn’t been strewn up in chains and other bondage. No, he had simply been dumped on the toy like something a child was done playing with. He wasn’t even in a dungeon or the like. Oh no, the Goblin King wished for him to be in good view and to be in good nature with the subjects of his heinous Kingdom.

On stony, light brown floors, given a bit of buttered bread to nibble on, Ephraim watched the chaos. Goblins, these horrible menfolk, busied themselves amongst each other. Squabbling and arguing, yanking on each other’s chains and trying to steal sausages and the likes from each other. It was all so noisy and cluttered and busy. Ephraim could hardly hear himself think to himself as the goblins yelled and jeered at each other. Voices overlapping cacophonously. It was more anarchy than it was a monarchy from what he could observe.

He couldn’t understand how the Goblin King could bear it. The Goblin King all perched up pretty on his throne a stone’s throw from where Ephraim was made to sit in a pit just below with a vast array of awful, foul-smelling bedfellows.

The Goblin King lounged on his throne. One leg hooked over the arm of it; the other rested across his lap folded in on itself. His throne was a dingy, rusted thing made of bones, not just decorative metals. It might have once been wreathed in jewels but now it had nothing but its deteriorating cape of purple. It didn’t even have a plush, velour seat below. He tapped out a steady rhythm on his boot with his lance. It was balanced upon a finger as though it were light as a feather. He looked deep in thought which made his horrid face all the worse. 

His eyes kept flicking up to a clock on the wall. It was brassy and bent out of shape. A dagger made up its hour hand which pointed at the three on its face. Its minute hand was pointed the other way making it a bit more than half past the hour.

Whilst the Goblin King thought through his thoughts, his subjects caused trouble. One with a blowdart made kissing noises and terrorised a black chicken with the blown darts. It made awful clucking noises as it flapped about, terrified, all to match the sound of the Goblin’s awful laughter. Ephraim was less than amused by the cruelty, glaring across the room from these events. But the Goblin King was enthralled by it. He laughed slowly, greatly, deeply. The heavy thoughts that he had been thinking simply evaporated off his brow.

The Goblin King swung over his throne and rose to his feet. He toyed with his lance for a moment, playful like a hunting feline, and he smacked the ground with the hilt of his lance twice over. Thunk, thunk. The whole room stopped what it was doing. Dead silence. All until the Goblin King wordlessly smiled a cruel smile. His yellow teeth on full view in it and Ephraim’s skin crawled as the Goblin King laughed a full bellied laugh.

“What excellent sport,” the Goblin King remarked, “do it again. Show me again.”

His Goblins went wild with delight at the instruction. The Goblin with the blow dart lined up its wooden straw to its hairy mouth once more and blew more darts at the chicken. It flapped about in a panic but dart after dart assailed it. All to that horribly raucous laughter around it - the loudest voice in the room, of course, belonging to the Goblin King. He kicked his foot around in his amused ecstasy, not caring that he was punting at his own subjects with his boot as he did so. Not that his subjects minded either, it was more slapstick to laugh and gawk at but the senseless violence of it all disgusted Ephraim.

“You are a monster.” Ephraim spat towards the Goblin King. He got up in a scramble. He didn’t wait to pat himself down as he tried to go to par with the villain before him.

The Goblin King looked down his nose at Ephraim. The human boy barely reached his chest in height.

“I know.” the Goblin King replied to Ephraim, most delighted by the insult. 

“What do you want from me? From my sister, you sick creep?” Ephraim snarled.

“I seek to tame her.” the Goblin King replied, his voice eerily calm.

Ephraim was horrified by his mild yet malicious answer. His skin crawled and he watched as the slits of the Goblin King’s eyes flicked about, pleased fantastically by how Ephraim felt of him.

“I seek to tame you as well. Where she will be made queen,” the Goblin King explained, “you will be made the peon.”

The Goblin King reached out to caress Ephraim but he flinched. He moved himself away but still did the Goblin King’s long, yellow claws catch on his cheek. But the skin was not ribboned with thin streaks of blood and flesh, but rather made to blush. A tender act and the Goblin King was no longer staring at an adolescent but a boy, perhaps twelve. Perhaps younger.

“Oh yes, you will be tamed quite nicely and made one of mine and my Lady’s subjects. Never will she have to behold your ugly face again, boy.” the Goblin King snarled delicately, savouring the look of fear that flashed through Ephraim’s eyes.

Ephraim looked at his hands. His fingers were shorter, stubbier, and he did in fact notice that the Goblin King stood taller - and it was not he, Valter, who had grown taller but he who had grown shorter. Ephraim backed off and Valter incited yet more chaos in this tower of the Goblin King’s. 

Ephraim looked out the window; a small, glassless keyhole in the far wall beyond the Goblin King’s throne. He withheld a sigh as he could only hope for Eirika to rescue him in a timely manner. And so, whilst Eirika kept moving, Ephraim kept remaining very still. Around him, the Goblins jibbered and jabbered but his mouth was very tight with a grim expression. As grim as a child looking about twelve years old could look. The clock on the wall’s minute arm had moved slightly and that slight movement filled the Goblin King with glee.

“In nine hours and twenty-three minutes,” he warned a most petulant Ephraim, “your sister will be mine and you will be another dithering fool in my - _our_ \- Kingdom.”

Please, Eirika… Ephraim found himself silently begging, seeing those washes of the blue sky and being reminded of his sister. She had to. She simply had to.

Eirika, as though an intrinsic bond that she had with her brother, did sense his hopes for his rescue and she continued on. Corner after corner, bend after bend. It all looked the same. A hopeless twist of clay and sandstone with dust that shifted underfoot. Eirika felt as though she were going nowhere fast despite how she kept up a swift pace on her feet.

Looking around, reaching down along the seam of her jeans, she was desperate for something in her surroundings which she could use as a landmark. That bizarro sculpture a blink in her memory as she felt a lump in her pocket. She riffled through it, pausing, and smiled to herself when she produced a tube of lipstick. 

She untubed it and the wax kiss of it glinted in the morning sunlight. It was a ruby red that Eirika thought would look divine on her lips but now wasn’t the time for such rouge. Instead, she bent down and scrawled an arrow on the ground. If there were no signs to help her through this maze then she would simply make her own. Satisfied with the neatness of the arrow, she skipped forth and raced on down the next neck of this part of the Labyrinth.

Her cleverness was cleverness to the vast displeasure of the poor little fellow who lived below the brick of clay that she had drawn upon. With a claw, it poked up along the cracks of the brick and then gave a shove to the middle, that flipped the brick one way so that creature could pounce out of its hiding spot. It nattered angrily to itself as it helped to push the brick further back into the ground with the slightest gap for it to jump through once more. From there, the fluffy little creature underground could scrub away that terrible scrawl. Red was such an ugly colour, it thought to itself as it set its work at removing Eirika’s graffiti - all without her realising.

Eirika continued to rush through the Labyrinth. She kept her head up for any sign that she might be going the right way - or even the wrong way - but she marked her way at every corner with more arrows. The bricks scraping behind her as someone kept flipping them to remove her signage. All she noticed, however, was the dust and debris on the kiss of the lipstick tube as she went about her way with that hopeful determination that she had.

She bounded up a set of rocky stairs and went down the corridor that it led to. It was adorned with hanging, green foliage and another one of those spherical sculptures. But there were a lot of bits and pieces like that around here, Eirika had observed. She bent down and marked a stone in the middle of the walkway with her lipstick tube which was beginning to empty but as she looked up, walked maybe two or three steps, she shook her head as her steps slowed with her hasty breath. No, something wasn’t right, she found herself thinking and she heard something. The clinking of stones so she drew back a couple of paces.

Her arrow had moved. From the rightly position she had drawn it, it was now facing the wrongly position. Fuming, Eirika drew back to her full height and she threw down her tube of lipstick.

“It’s not fair!” she cried out. “What a horrible place this is!”

“That’s right, it’s not fair.” a flippant voice agreed with her.

Someone else groaned at such a lazy reply and Eirika turned her head.

Once again, she had taken the Labyrinth for granted and a new path had been opened up to her in her moment of frustration. Eirika stared, in disbelief, as she looked unto what she could only describe as a pair of playing cards dressed in armour. One - the not quite soldier to the left - was dressed in red and gold armour whilst the other - the not quite soldier to the right - was dressed in green and gold armour. They reminded her of playing card kings in that they had legs and heads in far too many places.

“This was a dead end a minute ago.” Eirika told them as she cautiously drew in closer to them both.

“No, the dead end is behind you.” the Charlatan in Chartreuse replied.

Eirika glanced over her shoulder and sure enough. The few steps she had taken were all sealed up by the continuous, clay brown walls that were all around her except for straight in front of her. Behind each of those playing card soldiers was a door, wonky and lopsided and encased in tarnished bronze.

“It keeps changing, what am I supposed to do?” Eirika asked, desperate

“The only way out of here is to try one of these doors.” the Charlatan in Chartreuse told her.

“One of them leads to the Castle at the centre of the Labyrinth and the other one leads to - ba-da-da-bum! - certain death.” the Rogue in Rouge told.

Eirika’s eyes went wide. “Which one is which?”

“We can’t tell you.” the Rogue in Rouge replied.

“Huh? Why not?” Eirika interjected, a touch cross.

The two not quite soldiers in their playing card armour exchanges glances between all their heads and eyes whilst humming, biding for time playfully as Eirika awaited an answer to her question. She glared.

“We don’t know-”

“But they do!”

Eirika blinked as she watched these creatures before switch themselves around. The bottom went up and the up went down. Armour clunked and clanged about and yet the wooden shields that they held never got lost in all the rattling and switching about.

“But we do.” both the Charlatan in Chartreuse and the Rogue in Rouge said.

“Then tell me.” Eirika said, vastly unamused, folding her arms.

“Then pick one, honey.” the new Rogue in Rouge said.

“What do you mean?” Eirika frowned.

“You can only ask one of us one question, those are the rules.” the new Charlatan in Chartreuse replied. “And we should warn you, only one of us always tells the truth and the other always lies. That’s a rule, too, oh and its Forde - him - who always lies.”

The Charlatan in Chartreuse pointed at the Rogue in Rouge, to much offence. 

“I do not,” spat the Rogue in Red, “I always tell the truth.”

The Charlatan in Chartreuse huffed and rolled his eyes. “Look, see? Another lie.”

Their other heads laughed and groaned. Eirika’s nerves prickled as she tried to get to the bottom of this terrible situation that she had stumbled upon. They kept going back and forth, accusing the other of being the liar. The way she decided was that it was either and neither and that she looked better in red than green so she walked up to the Rogue in Rouge, the assumedly named Forde.

She stared at him right in his brown eyes. “Now tell me,” she said, pointed, “would he-”

“Kyle.” the Rogue in Rouge informed her upon an interruption.

“Okay, yes, if I were to ask Kyle, would he tell me that this door leads to the Castle?”

Forde glanced to his other head between his legs, ducking behind his shield, only to poke out and stare at Kyle, and then continue to mutter behind the thickness of his shield. Eirika tried to make herself look more sharp, batting her eyes and pursing her lips until the deliberation was done.

“Yes…?” Forde replied with a wavering voice.

Eirika nodded, eyes shining, “Then the door that leads to the Castle is… that one. Kyle’s. And this must be the door which leads to certain death.”

Forde, the Rogue in Rouge, cooed, curious but also a touch mocking.

Kyle, the Charlatan in Chartreuse, nodded and was rather dubious at that.

“How do you know that? He could be telling the truth.” Forde exclaimed.

“But then you wouldn’t be.” Eirika deduced. “So if you told me that he said yes, I know the answer is no.”

“But I could be telling the truth.” Forde insisted.

“But then Kyle would be lying. So if you told me that he said yes, I know the answer would still be no.” Eirika reasoned.

Forde cocked his head and leaned towards his companion in chartreuse, “Wait a minute, is that right?” Forde asked, making a screwy expression.

“I don’t know. I never understood any of it.” Kyle confessed in a grumbling tone.

Both of Forde’s heads laughed but Eirika remained certain.

“No, I’ve figured it out,” she continued to insist, “I could never do it before. I think I’m getting smarter, this place is a piece of cake.”

As Eirika boasted, true of heart, Kyle stepped out of the way as it was his door that she had selected. He shook his head, his messy, mossy mop of emerald green hair shook with him as Eirika strided on through, beaming.

Just beyond the corridor that the doorway led to, as narrow and claustrophobic as it was, she could see the outline of the Castle far closer than it had been in other parts of the Labyrinth. It was easy. Eirika was ecstatic. Barely… ten-fifteen metres, Eirika reasons. Only to have the floor right underfoot, right by the heavy metal doorframe, collapse on her. 

The crinkle of wood and stone was harsh on her ears. Eirika screamed as she careened downwards. She was crammed into something even smaller than a chimney on the way down, batted and bobbed and bruised against the claustrophobic walls bedecked with prehensile plants. She was grabbed at by vines and leaves. Some of them were shaped like hands. Each jab was jarring. Her throat felt hoarse from her screaming as she was subject to all the worst that gravity had to offer. She tried to grab back but it was impossible. Everything was so flimsy as she tried to leverage herself in the chute.

She stopped. Midway. But she hadn’t hit the ground. There was nothing underfoot so her feet dangled. She was all hoisted up by those hands, gripping onto her tightly like roots in the ground. She looked around, panting. It was so dark but a little bit of light filtered through from where she had fallen. Her heart thumped in her heart as she stared at that glimpse of light as though she were Orpheous.

“Help!” Eirika screamed. “Help!”

“What do you mean help?” someone replied to her, most indignant.

Eirika looked around for a face. For the voice. But in the dark it was difficult, especially with how those plants moved and shifted before finally she saw a shape. The hands had tumbled in on themselves, clipped and curved and she saw lips. She saw eyes. All puppetry done by the hands.

“We are helping.” insisted the Plant. “We’re the Helping Hands.”

“Well you’re hurting me!” Eirika barked at them.

“We can drop you if you’re going to be rude. You're hurting _our_ feelings.” the Helping Hand sulked.

“O-Okay, I apologise. You’re right, I was being rude.” Eirika tried not to whimper with her reply.

“See? Much better.” the Helping Hands enthused. “Now, let’s try. Up or down?”

“What do you mean?” Eirika asked, furrowing a brow.

“Where would you like to go? Which direction: up… or down? I realise it's a big decision to make but we haven’t got all day.” the Helping Hands told her, leaves fluttering.

“Which way…?” Eirika murmured and she craned her head forward to see better. “Well… I’m already pointed this way… I guess I’ll go down.”

“She chose down!” sing-songed the Helping Hands.

They let go of Eirika immediately. Her eyes widened and her stomach plummeted. 

“Was that wrong?!” she yelled as she was thrown back to the worst of it once more.

“Too late now!” they crooned to her terror.

Unassisted, not intervened or otherwise toyed with by the Helping. Not one bit. Eirika screamed and screamed as she was dropped through the chute and through all its leaves and twigs and stems. Anything else which might flick at her, malicious and otherwise, too.

She was spat out on her knees through something like a sewer plate. Through a cloud of dust and cobwebs. Her knees stung as she looked unto pitch darkness. The scantest light only illuminated her hair. Not her path as she strained her eyes on this lonely, lonely darkness. So big and infinite and unknown.

Above her, she heard the chattering and jeering of the Helping Hands. It was cruel. They were cruel. And they sealed her down there. She heard a metallic clunk and the bare, beige light source that she had was gone. She inhaled the dust with a useless huff. She was officially all alone in this pitch blackness.

And the Goblin King was anything but all alone as he examined Eirika through the convex surface of the crystal ball that he held. The very same one that he would have loved to have gifted to Eirika but alas. She had had the gall to reject him but it was that gall that made him adore her. But he had to admit, it was better when she looked terrified and in the distortions of the glass, that’s what she was.

“She’s in the Oubliette.” the Goblin King observed.

All around him, his Goblin subjects were eager to get a look as well. They were rank and foul-smelling; bulge eyed as they clamoured for just a glimpse of the girl whom their King was infatuated with. Ephraim glared from the pit. He had no interest in knowing what horrors his sister was in the throes of. She was the one who had gotten them into this mess so it was a fitting punishment so long as she prevailed. She had to prevail. 

“She should not have gotten as far as the Oubliette.” the Goblin King seethed. “She should have given up by now and surrendered herself to my loving arms.”

“She’ll never give up!” Ephraim proclaimed from the pit. 

The Goblin King smiled a snarl of a smile. “Oh, won’t she?” he taunted Ephraim, looking like an eight year old now because of the magic. “The Dwarf will cross her path soon and he will lead her back to the beginning. She will soon give up when she realises that she will have to start all over again.”

The Goblin King incited a round of cruel laughter which disgusted Ephraim. The Goblins sputtered out laughter, to join in on their king and all his delights. The Goblin King tossed that crystal ball, playing with it up and down like a child. All across its surface, vexed and distorted, was Eirika’s face and Ephraim felt his heart constrict inside his chest as Eirika looked left and then right but all there was the darkness of the so-called Oubliette.

Eirika swallowed and she strained her ears. One step like a pebble kicked. A second step like a pebble kicked. She heard more than her own breathing, panicked but calming down. 

“Who’s there?” she asked.

The response was gruff and grunted, “Me.”

A match hit the striking box with a friticious sound that made Eirika’s skin crawl. A flame burst to light and someone kicked in closer and found a candle. From the match head to the candle, more light was made. Orangey-yellow and bouncy, Eirika could see ahead more and in the cascading shadows, she saw a familiar face.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s you!”

In the grit and the grime, basked in orange-brown light which reflected off the walls of the Oubliette, Eirika saw Rennac. And she couldn’t have been happier to have seen him and his small stature and his roguish get up. Eirika scrambled to her feet, ecstatic that there was some good fortune in all the mishaps that she had had of recent.

“Oh yes, just me, well I knew you were gonna get in trouble the moment I met you, missy, so here I am to bail you out.” Rennac grumbled.

Eirika hazarded out a smile. She began to look around again now that the more of this horrible dungeon had been illuminated by the candle that Rennac had lit. It was awful. Dry and dusty. Ringed with cobwebs. The ceiling was popcorned with unclaimed ores of metal and gems. Rusted chains were pinned up to the walls that were bubbled and rocky. 

“Looking around now, huh?” Rennac taunted. “Then I’m sure you noticed. No door down here. It's just a hellhole. Well, er, it does have a proper name. Welcome, princess, to the Oubliette. The Labyrinth is full of ‘em.”

“Really? How do you know that?” Eirika asked.

“Don’t go and try sounding smart. Bet you don’t even know what an oubliette is.” Rennac growled.

“Do you?” Eirika countered.

Rennac nodded with a snarl of a dour expression. “Yes. It's a place you put people to forget about ‘em.” 

Eirika was quiet to hear that. A curve in her harp’s bow lips and there was a sad note on her expression. Who wanted to forget her? The Goblin King or her twin brother? She didn’t know which rejection would hurt more.

Rennac must not have noticed Eirika’s melancholy. He was busy nattering to himself as a Dwarf was prone to do. He picked himself up, buckled up his belt and made sure his little bag of unknown goodies was still affixed to said belt. 

“Now all you’ve gotta do is get out of here.” Rennac piped up to Eirika’s sudden delight. No one would forget about her just yet. “So what are you going to do about it?”

Eirika was still, save for her hands in front of her. She fidgeted and she became most crestfallen. It was pitiful.

Rennac tutted. “Well, it just so happens that I know a shortcut outta here. Goes all the way outside the Labyrinth from here.”

“No, I’m not giving up.” Eirika retorted, offended that Rennac would even suggest a preposterous and cowardly thing. “I’ve come too far!” 

Her voice was loud but Rennac was cynical.

Eirika grimaced and she sat down, “I’m doing okay…” she confessed. Her voice was quieter than before. Almost humble.

“Of course you are.” Rennac told her, sympathetic, as he drew in closer to her. Sitting down, cross legged, Eirika and Rennac were about the same height. Rennac patted her knee. “But it’s gonna get a hell of a lot worse from here on out, is the thing.”

“Why are you so concerned about me?” Eirika asked, her brow twinged.

Rennac was caught off guard by the question. He awkwardly stopped patting Eirika’s knee and started to her back away from her, all flabbergasted. 

“Oh, uh, er I- I just am.” he stammered. “You know. Nice, young girl. Terrible, black Oubliette.” 

There was almost a lie on the tip of Rennac’s nose but Eirika couldn’t see it in full. For whom would Rennac toil to lead her astray… Whom did he hunt the fairies for if not for himself?

“Riiiiight.” Eirika replied. She shifted how her hands sat in her lap and she became aware of how her bracelet jangled on her wrist. “You like jewellery, don’t you?” She asked Rennac out of seeming nowhere. To him at least.

“A bit. An unscrupulous character, I am regarded as but I’m no thief. Not like merchants, traders, and bankers are, at least.” Rennac replied, he crossed his arms.

“A man who knows his salt.” Eirika bantered.

Rennac made an agreeing hand gesture, “Exactly.” he said.

“I’ve always thought so.” Eirika said, nodding her head. “So, if you help me solve this Labyrinth, I will surrender this bracelet.”

Eirika couldn’t even believe that she had said such a thing. Her bracelet was known, to her at least, as the Lunar Brace. It was a charm bracelet of silver and plastic. Tiny moons of silver hung off it and aquamarine beads glittered attached to it. It had no monetary value but it had sentimental value the likes of which could never be measured in the means of money. As a little girl, Eirika had made it with her mother and she had made one for Ephraim, too. With golden suns and yellow beads: the Solar Brace. He had worn it maybe once or twice whereas Eirika never took off her Lunar Brace. Until now at least.

Her heart tremoured as she unclasped it and dangled it in front of Rennac’s earthy-coloured eyes. All her soul screamed for her to wager something else for Rennac’s compliance since he seemed so adamant about leading Eirika not necessarily astray but away from where she had to go upon this quest she had embarked on. But for the sake of her brother’s safety, Eirika would willingly hand over such a precious item. 

“It’s, uh, so-so.” Rennac said, making non-committal hand gestures but the greed in his eyes gave him away, even as he turned his head to hide them.

“Okay.” Eirika chirupped.

She had to turn her face too, to hide how gleeful she was that Rennac would turn away from such a prize. Eirika stood up and she began to stride away from where the candle was able to illuminate but Rennac wouldn’t leave her alone. He kept pace with her longer, if feminine, human strides.

“Actually, you know what, tell you what: you give me the bracelet,” Rennac attempted to barter once more and Eirika oh-so-innocently turned back around, batting her eyes, “and I’ll show you the way out of the Labyrinth.”

“You were going to do that anyway, you scoundrel.” Eirika frowned, putting her fists on her hips whilst tightly clutching her bracelet.

“Yes, well, that’s what would make it a particularly nice gesture on your part.” Rennac replied, wry and with a voice a pitch higher than usual.

“No, I’ll tell you what,” Eirika said, sinking down to her knees so that she could be eye level with Rennac, “if you won’t take me to the centre of the Labyrinth, take me as far as you can.” she pleaded. “And then I will do it on my own.”

In the pinch of her fingers, by the candlelight, Eirika dangled her precious Lunar Brace in front of Rennac’s face. Eirika swallowed and the materialist in her greatly desired that Rennac rejected her offer. The bratty younger sister in her was desperate that he did accept her offer because she wanted to see Ephraim again. (Perhaps, preferably, even with his Solar Brace on his wrist, if he had it all.) The candlelight flickered. The tension was less than palatable as Eirika all but hypnotised herself with the way that Rennac’s eyes changed by the second as he followed the swing of the bracelet in front of him. 

“What is that anyway?” Rennac asked, a frown bowing down into his severe, dwarven expression.

“Plastic.” Eirika replied.

“Plastic.” Rennac echoed, eyes alight as though he had never heard - or even see - of the material before. Slowly, his hand reached up and he caressed the smooth, aquamarine of the beads that charmed the bracelet. “I won’t promise anything but, uh…” Rennac suspiciously glanced around, his shoulders buckling in on themselves to make him seem even smaller than he already was. “But, uh, I will take you as far as I can. Then, you’re on your own, right?”

“Right.” Eirika said.

With lingering reluctance, Eirika surrendered her precious Lunar Brace to Rennac. Her stomach dropped when she dropped the bracelet into Rennac’s awaiting hands. They were wrinkled and worn, reminding her of leather and like a leather pouch, he eagerly scooped up the trinket possessively. He grinned to himself, eyes as big as coins, as he wandered off, so excited by the plastic. Plastic! Rennac was far too pleased with himself and the bracelet, Eirika watched from afar with a betraying feeling in her chest as her bracelet now adorned Rennac’s wrist.

She could see her brother again, in the flesh, but not her mother, she tried to tell herself. But all in all, it was cold comfort. 

Rennac plodded onwards. Eirika skulked along behind him, cradling herself as she kept her head down. Together, they funneled into a smaller part of the Oubliette. The candlelight didn’t quite reach but what it did reach wasn’t heartening. Glances along the floor and Eirika was certain that she saw a cobweb ridden skull missing its jaw down there.

Rennac halted something and bent over. Eirika stopped a pace behind him and watched him reef something from the floor. Wood clanked against the rocky walls as he tossed something aside. A hatch door?

“Ah-ha,” he proclaimed, “found it.”

Before Eirika could ask if they were going down further into the Oubliette and the underground, Rennac turned around. He fixed up the door and though it had no latch, he was treating it as such. Rennac opened it and a new space had opened up but pots and pans and other similar items fell out of the tiny cavity, barely bigger than Rennac. They dinged and ringed on the floor, clamouring over Rennac who was bemused by the situation more than anything else.

“Ah you dastard.” Rennac cussed. “Broom closet. Can’t be right every time as my Mother used to say.” He half-explained, half-complained as he threw a look at Eirika who was most bewildered.

Rennac kicked aside a pot and a pan. Eirika wasn’t sure what kind of broom closet would have those sorts of things in it but in the dark, she did glimpse something broom shaped. With the doorframe cleared again, Rennac closed the door. He kept his hand on the meagre, bronze handle and took a breath. He opened the door again. But this time, when he opened the door, silver-white light scattered out like moonlight through the foliage of trees. Eirika was amazed and Rennac extended a hand to her, looking back towards her. His expression was odd as it was unreadable in how mild it was; it wasn’t proud. Just earnest, Eirika supposed.

“This is it.” he told her. “Come along. Quickly now.”

Without even checking on Eirika one last time, to make sure she was keeping par, Rennac headed on through that door. But Eirika did follow and she followed closely. She bent at a bad angle to keep her head down as she ducked through the doorway. She had been expecting a corridor but all she got was the slightest incline below in the floor which was hard and uneven. Rennac trudged ahead but they barely went anywhere at all to get through to the other side.

They came out the other side in a crack in a cavern wall. Eirika squeezed through but Rennac had to as well as the crack was oddly shaped, like a lightning bolt, compared to the rest of the cavity. Rearing back to her full height, Eirika glanced around. It was pale in here, the wall might have been granite or something else. Some sort of grey stone. There was natural light too but she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. It was like a warren in here, jarred with stalactites and stalagmites in unequal, messy measure.

Rennac charged on through without hesitation. Eirika did her best to keep up with him but this place gave her a bad feeling. Particularly when she began to notice the heads in the wall. Taller than her, twice as wide too, they were mostly featureless. Just engravings for eyes and mouths, stern foreheads and slim noses sloping downwards. And just like most other things in the Labyrinth, they spoke too.

“Go no further.”

“Don’t go on.”

“Heed our warnings.”

Their voices were deep and gravelly. Their rumblings filled the whole of the caverns. Eirika shivered, moving herself to and fro to avoid the outlines of their faces but Rennac was calm. Their warnings were never ending. Grim and grave, serious to the bone. Eirika tried her best not to show her fear as she kept close to Rennac, silent amid it all.

They went around another corner. The ground underfoot had begun to feel sloping upwards, Eirika could feel the change in her legs as they began going uphill. The gigantic, carved faces in the walls were becoming infrequent, too. The cluster was thinning out but they passed one more.

“Beware… beware… beware!”

Rennac screwed up his face as Eirika glanced, concerned, to yet another of these stony warnings.

“Pish-posh,” he huffed, “don’t pay ‘em any mind.” he scathingly said, shrugging. “They’re just false alarms. You get a lot of them in the Labyrinth. Especially when you’re on the right track.”

“Oh no you’re not.” bemoaned another of the faces.

“Shut up.” Rennac growled.

Eirika glanced behind them. She wanted to believe Rennac but an ill feeling brewed in her chest. She yearned to touch her Lunar Brace once more but she had given it up and that worsened the bad feeling that she had as well.

“I’m just doing my job…” one of the faces grumbled.

Rennac rolled his eyes. He kept leading Eirika through the caverns. The path tilted downwards and they passed another head. Rennac cut through the moaning with sass but Eirika was more cautious than that. She strained her ears and she could swear she heard something unusual. Like a lawn bowl through sand, Eirika’s ears pricked up whilst Rennac got into it with another one of those talking heads. 

Whilst they bantered, Eirika thought there was some humour to their exchanges but honestly, it just made her stomach churn as she had all these horrid notions about what to come. In her experience, warnings were warnings for good reason and she thought of her Father and all his rules and curfews. Oh, he was going to be so mad - and so sad by the end of this.

To distract herself from being caught in a rock and a hard place, Eirika turned her head. Looking around, ideally hoping for the source of the natural light spilling through the caverns, it was on the floor that something caught her eye in the grit and pale brown dirt. She saw something unusual that she had been dreading. Strolling through, curving this way and that, a glint of light on the ground caught her eye. A crystal ball. The crystal ball. Guided neat and languid, like magic, down the slightly downward slope of the flooring.

“Uh-oh…” Eirika murmured in a barely there voice.

But Rennac heard it. And he echoed the same sentiment. Uh-oh indeed.

The crystal ball rolled past their feet, picking up speed. They traced its wake. Their footsteps either side of the sand blasted through. They followed it and those voices grew eerily silent. There was nothing more to be said as Eirika and Rennac took uncertain steps into darker depths within the warren of caverns.

They watched as the crystal ball was kicked up by forces unknown and forced unseen. A perfect arch through the air and a cup, tinny and skinny, was thrust forward, catching the crystal ball with a clink and clunk. All draped in shadows, Eirika was uncertain as to what kind of vagrant they had happened upon in this part of the cavern but he was an eerie fellow. A tricorn hat upon his head and a beak like a snake. Dressed in rags of royal indigo and a splash of red, like a gash of blood, here and there upon him in the form of a ragtag and winding scarf.

“Ah, what have we here?”

The voice was a stranger’s. To Eirika at least. It was all croaky and scratchy like a bearded dragon’s beard. But Rennac thrust out both his arms to shield Eirika like a crow’s nest.

“Oh, uh, nothing.” Rennac replied defensively to the stranger. But it seemed the stranger wasn’t at all a stranger to Rennac, at the very least.

“Nothing?” snarled the creature. “Nothing? Nothing?!”

The creature reared up to its full height and became nothing but a costume. A puppet. A tear-away face for a most familiar man. No longer hunched over and no longer masked, Eirika and Rennac were confronted by the Goblin King. He was truly a gargantuan monster of a man; his expression was gruesome.

“O-Oh, you’re majesty, what a nice surprise.” Rennac said as feigned said surprise with high brows and a pleasant, by his standards at least, kind of voice.

“Hello Ronald.” the Goblin King said.

“Randal.” Eirika interjected, confident in how she, too, was incorrect.

“Rennac.” Rennac complained.

“Rennac, now, could it be that you are helping my prey?”

“Helping? In, uh, what sense?” Rennac asked.

The Goblin King threw off what remained of his gnarly costume. The cloak dropped to the ground and Eirika eyed up Valter’s kingly fineries but they too were slivered back to pieces as well. Though, he did wear a brown leather jacket with his green-grey tights that accentuated his codpiece. His hair was wild, too, sticking up in places, creating clashing angles over his already sharp cheeks.

“In the sense,” the Goblin King snarled, “that you are leading her towards the Castle.”

“No, no,” protested Rennac, “I was taking her back to the beginning, Your Majesty.”

The Goblin King cocked his eyes towards Eirika, most intrigued by what her reaction would be.

And her reaction was to step forward, eyes all but glowing mad, as she growled, “What did you just say?”

“I only told her I was going to help her solve the Labyrinth. A little trickery on my part, heh. But actually-” Rennac attempted to explain himself but the Goblin King interrupted him.

“What is that plastic thing around your wrist?” the Goblin King venomously inquired.

Rennac instinctively hid his hands but he knew it was useless. They reared back in front of them. Both the plastic and the low quality silver that the Lunar Brace was made of glinted in the low light. Eirika watched intently, her lower lip pouting as she had great and grave fears for the continuation of this exchange.

“Oh…? This?” Rennac fumbled with his words. “Oh, my goodness, where did this come from, er…?”

“Renault.” the Goblin King stated.

“Rennac…” Rennac bitterly corrected his dire Majesty.

“Yes, if I thought for one second that you were betraying me, you worm, I would be forced to suspend you headfirst in the Bog of Eternal Stench.”

“No, your Majesty, not the Bog of Eternal Stench!” Rennac protested, a hand on his heart as he looked genuinely concerned with the validity, and sharpness, of this thread.

Eirika didn’t think it sounded too threatening. If anything, it sounded kind of lame. And yet Rennac came down to his knees to grovel before the Goblin King against such a potential sentencing regardless.

“Oh yes, Rennac.” the Goblin King snarled and he kicked Rennac.

It was a swift strike which Eirika cried out again. The Goblin King gave her a glare as he dug the toe of his boot into Rennac’s midsection. He seemed to have cruel relish as he delighted in how Eirika cried, horrified, and how Rennac cried, grunting, having been kicked. Rennac gasped as he clutched his stomach. Winded by the blow and the Goblin King paid no attention to him. He merely turned on the heel of his high heeled boot so that he could address Eirika. He sauntered closer to her. A cruel swagger in his step.

“How dare you…” Eirika breathed out, snarling, through gritted teeth.

But the Goblin King minded not. He sauntered closer. Eirika’s heart raced as she looked up at him. He was violent. Malevolent. Ugly but beautiful at the same time. He tutted as he had this swagger to his step.

“And you, Eirika…” the Goblin King drawled. He put out his arm, touched out to the stone cavern and leaned into Eirika’s personal space, a kiss’s breadth away from her lips. “And how are you enjoying my Labyrinth?”

Eirika’s chest tightened with the Goblin King Valter so close to her. He caged her, with his arm and his other hand drew up towards her face but was satisfied to entwine a finger around the long, fluffy locks of her hair. Stroking her, petting her, all very slowly. He savoured the moment very greatly. All he could imagine as his eyes graced her, so sickly, was that theirs should be a spring wedding. 

With the Goblin King Valter in such close proximity, Eirika was more than a little nervous. She could feel his sullen arousal, an aura of dark pheromones and a hardness by her side, just beyond the reach of her fingertips. She could swear that he could hear how her heart pounded when he drew near. She licked her lips and they were so cute. A peach in colour when natural and how he adored them natural, in the flesh. Her eyes were wide, the blue swirling like fractals of ice in the cold winter night before she looked away to lie.

“It’s a piece of cake.” she told him but there was no confidence in her quiet voice. And yet she kept her chin up regardless and met his azurine stare like dead fish eyes.

Rennac sucked in a sudden breath as he cursed the girl and all that bravado that she had somewhere in that fragile body of hers.

“Really?” The Goblin King was enthralled by such a delightful answer. “Exactly what I expect of my prey. Then how about we up the stakes, hm?”

Eirika’s jaw slackened. She was helpless as she watched the Goblin King’s far hand draw back lazily. At his command, a golden mirror with insignias of the sun and moon materialised. He swirled his fingers around and the hands of the clock followed rapidly. Minutes and hours dwindled to Eirika’s horror.

“That’s not fair!” she interjected, eyes wide with fear.

“You say that so often, my minnow.” the Goblin King lamented. He lowered his arm and he returned his gaunt gaze to Eirika. “It makes me wonder though…” he murmured. “What is your baseline for comparison…?”

Eirika glared. A lump in her throat. She thought it was pretty unfair for time to be robbed from someone, be it with her or just like with her mother. But she kept her mouth shut as she suspected that a sob story wouldn’t do much for one quite like the Goblin King.

The Goblin King turned his back on Eirika, but only partially as he sauntered off. He tutted to himself. An elegance to how he carried himself, as sharp like a blade as it was.

“So,” he spoke, more to himself than Eirika and more to Eirika than Rennac, “the Labyrinth is a piece of cake, is it?”

Eirika remained still. Still and silent. That neither pleased or displeased the Goblin King as he played with that crystal ball. His large hands doing delicate things with that orb as it absorbed all the darkness around it, barely reflecting anything at all - neither Eirika or the Goblin King.

“Well then,” he said and he stopped that play, left and right, “let’s see how you deal with this slice then, my prey.”

His movements shifted. Once slow and slovenly now became sharp and swift. He lunged forward and threw the crystal ball far into the darkness beyond the corridor of where they lingered. No one knew what to expect. No one but the Goblin King who smiled, ear to elfin ear, as he awaited for what he desired to bring forth. They saw it disappear but they didn’t hear it clink.

But then a light shone in the alley way. Like a plasma ball. Swirling and fluorescent, multi-coloured. Something mechanical and huge surged forward. The walls rattled like the walls as an underground train that would pass. Rennac screamed.

“The Cleaners!” he yelled.

“The what?!” Eirika exclaimed.

The nose of the murderous machine came into the light. It was conical and studded with spikes. Rusted and brown. The machine was long and perhaps even phallic despite all the moving parts and other attachments.

Rennac grabbed Eirika’s hand. He tugged her one way and she came running with him. They were clumsy and awkward as they attempted to make their escape. They dashed down the corridor. The bricks on the wall tiny and claustrophobic. The Cleaners hot on their tail. The sound of its wheeled echoed over and over, a horrible screech as it plumed with a foul smelling smoke.

They urged each other forward as they pushed on through. Not letting go of each other’s hands once. Panting and puffing, ignoring how their feet burned as they avoided the nose of the Cleaners by a good ten metres or so. Keeping pace and going further. But it all seemed so useless. So hopeless. The corridor couldn’t go on forever - and it didn’t.

“Oh no…” Rennac groaned as he and Eirika skidded to a halt.

Right in front of them was an iron bar gate. It was brownish red with rust; the bars thick and the padlock that kept them together even thicker. It was useless to bang and rattle on.

“The Cleaners… The Bog of Stench… You sure got his attention!” Rennac yelled as he tried to force open the gates despite knowing its impossible.

Eirika groaned as she looked this and that. She dashed back a couple paces and tried to search the walls for something she had taken for granted. For another way out. But she could barely hear herself think as the Cleaners encroached. It's horrible clanging noises that it emanated drew closer and closer. She was out of breath as she felt hot and sudden tears in the corner of her eyes.

But even so, Eirika remained calm and she found something. The bricking was different here. It wasn’t bricking at all. When she pushed on it, it pushed back. Bounced. Rennac took notice and with a cuss under his breath, he joined Eirika those paces back and helped her push on the wall. Both their heads turned for certain doom, watching the Cleaners wheel itself forward at its all but breakneck pace. 

Squeaking and scratching, the Cleaners grew closer and closer until the wall broke down. Eirika and Rennac tumbled forward. They fell on their bellies with a thud. The wall barely cushioned their fall but it was better than nothing. It was better than rock or brick, whatever it was as it had a lot of leeway. 

Eirika glanced over her shoulder and she saw the machine known as the Cleaners up close and it was even worse than from afar. It was all jagged sharp metal constantly turning and twisting. Its wheels were spiked and it just kept on going, motored by the constant motion of a bicyclist and a party of monkeys. Circling through and through, the Cleaners pushed further. Narrowly avoiding her feet as she languished, dazed, on the dusty and mucky floor. But she was safe. Thank goodness, she and Rennac were both safe and there was a passage on the other side of it all.

The Cleaners kept bouncing up and down at the helm of their horrid machine. It devoured the gate that had once barred Eirika and Rennac from escape. The thick iron rods of it became dust before the ceaseless might of the Cleaners. Crashing down and crumbling with the most atrocious noises. Dust and cobwebs and mites of metal clouded in the wake of the Cleaners as they disappeared further down the tunnel.

Rennac pulled himself to his feet. Eirika staggered about as she stole a few more glances down towards the Cleaners, counting her blessings. Rennac dusted himself off but a smile was on his expression, as winded and dazed as he otherwise looked.

“Ah, that’s what he need.” Rennac exclaimed admiringly, pulling Eirika’s attention back into this new path that she opened up for them both. 

Eirika grimaced as she stared down the tunnel. It looked just as bleak and hopeless as the other option that the Cleaners had pared down for them. Licking her lips, she tasted dirt and her expression fouled. She tried to mentally prepare herself for another trek into an endless, dark oblivion but Rennac continued.

“A ladder,” he said, “follow me.”

Eirika drew in her closer but her steps were more like stomps, “And how do I know I can trust you? How do I know that you won’t take me back to the beginning of the Labyrinth?” Her voice was a growl.

“I wasn’t.” Rennac shrugged.

He started to climb up the ladder. Eirika watched as he hefted himself up a few rungs. The ladder was apparently more sound than it looked given how it handled Rennac’s weight. It looked like wood at first, but maybe only the rungs were. It was supported by rusted iron stilts nailed to the ground at one end and nailed to the ceiling at the other with big, ugly bolts.

“I told him that I was taking you back to the beginning just to throw him off the scent.” Rennac explained to her.

“But how I can trust you, Rennac. You didn’t actually reply to my questions.” Eirika pointed out with her hands on her hips.

“Well, ugh, let me put this way,” Rennac grumbled as he climbed closer to the ceiling, “what choice do you have?”

Eirika glanced around. The busted floor below. Darkness beyond. And the possibility that the love of her life the Goblin King was lurking around still. It seemed that going up was the best choice of all for she did not have many other.

“You’re right.” Eirika hesitantly admitted.

With a huff, Eirika reached out and she hefted herself up the rungs below Rennac. Being ganglier than Rennac, she had an easier time scaling the ladder but they both got through it in due time. It was a very long ladder, Eirika realised better with her hands on the planks. But truth be told, all she could focus on was the sight of Rennac’s little bag of goodies that he had pinned upon his belt at his hip - and how it swung to and fro as he ascended upwards upon the ladder. 

“See, you gotta consider this from my position,” Rennac began to explain, he was pretty heavy handed with both his voice and how he kept going up the ladder, “I’m a coward. And Valter scares me.”

“What kind of position is that?” Eirika scowled as she got way too close to Rennac’s bottom as they climbed.

“No position. That’s my point.” Rennac huffed and he turned his head so he could give a good, proper glare to Eirika beneath him. “And you wouldn’t be so brave if you’d ever caught a whiff of the Bog of Eternal Stench.” Rennac sniffled. “Its - It’s - Its-”

In his whirr to conjure the perfect mental image for Eirika to truly understand the olfactory horrors of the Bog of Eternal Stench, Rennac’s foot went through the plank that he was trying to step to next. Eirika swung away in time but the wood splintered on the way below. It kept falling and falling and falling until. Clunk. It hit the floor with a clatter.

Still, Eirika put on a brave face. Rennac kept climbing and Eirika avoided the damaged rung. She frowned.

“Is that all it does?” she asked. “Smell?”

“Oh, believe me, that’s more than enough.” Rennac growled. “But the worst thing is, if you so much as set foot in the Bog of Eternal Stench, you’ll smell bad for the rest of your eternal life. It’ll never wash off…”

Eirika was still dubious. She was fairly certain that Ephraim’s room was a Bog of Eternal Stench whenever he came home after any of his given athletics meetings but it was coming from Rennac, a Dwarf, so maybe she ought to take it more seriously. But what a silly name!

Before she could ruminate on it more seriously, her ears caught on the sound of porcelain chinking on alabaster or similar. Rennac pushed something forward and it seemed they had gone all the way up. Rennac pushed aside the cap of a statute. He peered out of it and saw the overside of the Labyrinth once more; dazzled by the middayish sun. 

“Here we are.” Rennac said. He crawled out of a grecian-looking pot with knobs and handles, was the colour of red ochre. “But you’re on your own from here on out, princess.”

There was more room at the top than what Eirika was expecting. She peeked out of the pot, her hands on the rim as she leveraged herself upwards. Her head brushed up against Rennac’s back as he climbed out of the pot. Eirika gasped as she looked around.

“Yep, that’s it, I quit.” Rennac told her as he planted his feet firmly on the ground below.

The more Eirika drew herself out of the pot, grabbing at whatever she could, the more she was surprised by her surroundings. Here, Labyrinth was much more verdant and vibrant than it was in other parts. She had not been led astray by her dubious little companion that she had in Rennac. From what she could tell with her eyes. This was certainly deeper than on the dry, almost drought-ridden hinterlands of the far side of the Labyrinth with its dark, foreboding walls.

Here, the walls were immaculately trimmed hedges. All of them cubic and precise. The green leaves were so crisp they could have been plastic. The bricks underfoot were artfully arranged and pale in colour. This area abounded in sculptures, too. Nutcracker soldiers and bakers in aprons. They were all of them were round cheeks and flecked with moss; they were of some porous rock sanded down to imitate the jolly faces of doll-like people. 

Eirika climbed out of the pot. She landed on the ground with more effort spent than she intended. She looked around and just beyond her line of sight, she saw a sundial peek out just beyond one of the hedges. And just beneath her line of sight, she watched as Rennac attempted to toddle off without anything more. Without even so much as a spoken goodbye.

“Rennac!” Eirika called out to him, trying to catch up to him as he walked off towards the sundial.

“I never promised you anything more than a way out of the Oubliette.” he defended himself, waving Eirika off. “All I said was that I would you as far as I could and now I have. Thank you and goodbye, princess. Unless, of course, you have any other items you think might be of value to me.”

Eirika managed to speed around Rennac. She stood forcefully in front of him.

“You little cheat! You nasty little cheat.” she cussed him out.

Rennac waved her off again. “Now don’t go and try to embarrass me. I have no pride to speak of.”

Well, if insults would just roll off him like water on a duck’s back, Eirika had other ideas. Rennac tried to side step her but she side-swiped him first. All up the climb of that darn ladder, she had been mesmerised by the swinging back and forth of that leather pouch of goods on his hips so she stole him from it. And then she got to do something she always wanted to do someone else - Ephraim had done it many times in the past, taking her teddy bears and other precious knickknacks and suspending them high on the air for her to grab at to no avail. 

Eirika teasingly dangled Rennac’s bag above his head. No matter how he hopped about, reaching up, Eirika all too easily reefed his bag from his hands. She laughed, childlike but cruel.

“Give that back! I’m serious, Eirika, give those back!” Rennac snarled.

Eirika whooped and hollered. She all but pranced about as she toyed with Rennac. She finally understood why Ephraim did this so many times to her growing up, it was a lot of fun. To dangle the item above Rennac’s head whilst pushing back, light on her feet, Eirika avoided every swipe that Rennac attempted. Eirika laughed and jeered as Rennac became increasingly desperate with a pitiful look in his eye but she still made merry at his expense.

“Give those back to me!” Rennac shouted, furious with her.

“Now,” Eirika said, eyes gleaming, she held the bag far above her head, “which way should we try? I can see the Castle from here, you know.”

Eirika looked, almost dreamily, into the distance. At the bottom of her view, she saw a hedged Labyrinth wall. In the fuzz of its clipped leaves, there were another layer or two of hedges or other Labyrinth walls but beyond that. She saw the Castle on the hill. Rising up in terraced swirls. Closer, she saw more of its paper wasp nest appearance but with more details: windows, spires, an archway to its entrance. Even if it was a little misty with distance.

“That’s my rightful property.” snapped Rennac. He kept storming forward and he thrust a pointed finger through the air as his voice went uncharacteristically high: “It’s not fair!”

Eirika made a standoffish expression to have her very own complaint used against her but she still stuck her chin in the air and kept Rennac’s treasure guarded in her hand.

“No, it isn’t.” she agreed in an oddly argumentative voice. Only to smile an enlightened smile. “But that’s just the way it is.”

The moment lingered a moment as Eirika soaked in the feeling of her epiphany. She felt sunshine on her back, warming her hair and she felt happy. Happy that she was being a tyrant to Rennac and happy that it was unfair. Everything was unfair and she was most pleased to have that fully in her head as perpetrator and victim of unfairness.

Eirika smiled only for it to falter. In her game of teenage chasesies with Rennac, they had stumbled into another part of the Labyrinth. It was more of the same. Those dolly statues with big, round cheeks and drummer boy equipment but also some more of the mathematical, akin to the sundial, a pile of books all propped up to become a throne of stone. Carved into the marble was the names of philosophers, mathematicians, and playwrights. It was all very studious.

As was the glare of the young woman who rode upon a boy who had the hindlegs of an emu. They had an unusual gait. Swaggering and majestic. Strides that had a fun little amble but it seemed that the majesty was fit to break whenever the girl leaned too far back one way or the other. Her weight not fully supported by the mount that she rode; a mount who had a rather grizzling face in contrast to the young woman on top’s steady, even glare with a glint of pursuit in her avian, violet eyes.

Combined, they made for an odd combined figure. All cloaked in purple, feathered and jewelled, a train dragging on the ground behind them as the emu-like boy kept taking another foot forward until together, they plopped down on that stone throne of knowledge.

The young woman turned her sharp eyes unto Eirika. Even though she was young, with high cheekbones and a pouty upper lip, the young woman seemed wizened. There was a prodigal, mystic sense about her which drew Eirika to her with all the kilter of an excitable faun. Rennac was most displeased to watch Eirika throw herself to yet another wily stranger of the Labyrinth but she swept a foot in front of her, like a curtsey, regardless.

“Excuse me.” Eirika said.

The emu boy, with a mop of orangey-brown hair flecked with feathers, and freckles on his cheeks harrumphed. He rolled his eyes and the young woman who sat upon his shoulders bopped him on the head without so much as looking down to him. Only to Eirika.

“Excuse me, please, but can you help me?” Eirika continued, undeterred. 

“Oh, a young maiden.” the young woman cooed, expression going wide and mad. “My name is Lute and this buffoon is Artur. It is good to make your acquaintance, young maiden.” 

Eirika was on the cusp of introducing herself, thinking it a good time in the lull of how this strange, magical woman spoke but Lute tilted her head sideways. She had more to say yet with her airy expression.

“Or should I say… Crown Princess?” There was a peculiar glint in her eyes, all knowing but what she knew was what Eirika did not know and perhaps even belonged to another lifetime. Another dimension.

Still, being referred to as such a pet name or title, Eirika was oddly flattered. She puffed out her chest and put her hand upon her breast, about to continue, trying to press Lute for information about the Castle and the like but Lute wagged her off again. Quite content with the sound of her own voice, it appeared.

“I know who you are but what of him? Who is that buffoon?” Lute asked and she gestured towards Rennac.

“My friend.” Eirika replied guiltlessly. As though she had never spent a second of any kind terrorising the Dwarf.

Rennac shot Eirika a dirty, sideways glance.

“I see.” Lute thoughtfully replied. 

Rennac’s dirty expression worsened. It seemed that Lute might have been convinced of their companionship but he sure as hell wasn’t.

“And what can I do for you?” Lute inquired with her shoulders haughtily rolling back, lifting her chin.

“Can you please tell-” 

Eirika interrupted herself upon a flash of inspiration. This was the Labyrinth and here, it was not that she should be careful what she wished for (though that was a tremendous thing to factor) but what she should be careful to take for granted. And right now she was taking for granted that an enigmatic young woman of purple mystery would simply tell her things. Especially the things she wanted to hear. With her hands wringing in front of her, Eirika started again.

“That is… I have to get to the Castle at the centre of the Labyrinth,” Eirika calmly, and sternly, explained to Lute’s piqued bemusement, “do you know the way?”

“Ah…” Lute murmured with a sage nod of her head.

“Huh?” Artur exclaimed to vast displeasure, casting a glower up to his mistress.

“Well, yes. Now.” Lute replied.

Her hand reached down and Eirika suspected that if Lute had a beard, she likely would have been fondling it. So, instead, having not a nary stray hair on her chin, she instead settled to grasp down below for the perfectly good replacement of hair atop the head of Artur who was between her legs. He seemed displeased again with her, only to melt into how she fondled his scalp. Showing off what a fine head of curly-wavy hair that he had. As such, his smile was just a teensy bit unguarded.

“You want to get the Castle,” Lute lectured everyone as she continued to pet Artur’s head but he shook her hand off.

“Don’t believe anything this girl says,” Artur warned them as Lute giggled evasively, “she’s nuts.”

“And he’s a birdbrain.” Lute countered.

“I want to hear her out, Artur, if you don’t mind.” Eirika said. “So, please, Lute, go on.”

Lute nodded her head smugly. Extremely pleased to hear that. She started to massage Artur’s scalp again as she thought very carefully about what advice she would bestow upon Eirika and, of course, her companion, too.

“Sometimes,” she began, “the way forward is sometimes the way back.”

Eirika tried to decipher what Lute had told her for hidden or secret meanings. She did her very best to suppress her first instinct of being irate at being told such a thing. She had spent so much time assuring that Rennac wouldn’t do that very thing to her that to be told that she ought to start over was just cruel. 

But then Artur smacked his lips together with a scowl that looked rather non-threatening on his baby face.

“Bah, humbug. Do you even hear this crock of monkey-feathers?” he asked.

Rennac grunted in agreement.

“Will you please be quiet and let the genius handle things.” Lute pouted, ripping at Artur’s hair.

He nattered in mild pain. “Alright, alright, just stop that.”

Lute did but it wasn’t overly consoling.

“Okay?” Artur murmured.

“Okay.” Lute chirped.

“All right.” Artur retorted.

“All right.” Lute levelled replied. “Excellent. Now that we have that out of the way… You are finished, yes?”

“Yes, yes.” Artur insisted, annoyed.

“So, quite often, Crown Princess, young maiden, Erina, whatever you prefer: it seems like we’re not getting anywhere when, in fact-”

“We are.” Artur interjected rather cheerfully.

“We are.” Lute continued on a sour note as she had been uppercut. She scowled down at Artur but didn’t resort to petty, childish things again like pulling his hair. She merely settled for that dour look.

“I’m certainly getting nowhere at the moment.” Eirika said. A touch bitter as she glanced around the Labyrinth, looking at the hedges and statues and then back in front of her. To the bird lady and bird boy who sat upon those books propped up as a throne.

But it seemed that Lute was content with the wisdom that she had dispensed. Her eyes fell closed sleepily and her head hung low, limply. Lips murmuring a lullaby as she began to doze. Eirika stared expectantly at Lute. Willing to wake her up but Lute only fell further and further asleep. Both Artur and Rennac were a little bit the same with Lute, as well.

“I, uh, think that’s your lot…” Artur lamented. He propped up his hand a little further. Feathers grew from his skin in places, sparse and almost artistically handsome, pushing back his long, floppy linen sleeves of his peasant blouse. “And as it is your lot, as the smarter - or at least more practical of us two - a contribution would be appreciated, your ladiness.”

Artur shook a little, wooden box. The handle of which was flatly pressed between his thumb and forefinger. He had tiny, avian claws at the tips of his fingers. When he shook the box, its contents rattled. Eirika wasn’t sure what was inside. Coins and rocks seemed as equally likely as other more exotic mysteries, too. Artur looked up at her with a stingy expression which seemed wrong for him to bear.

Eirika unclasped her hands from the protective hold that she had on Rennac’s bag. She began to toy with the drawstrings of it. They were gold and heavily ridged.

“Don’t you dare!” Rennac barked at her. “That is all mine.”

Eirika pursed her lips. Silently, she did agree that it would be craven of her to use Rennac’s goods as payment. So she paused to consider what else she had on her person. She didn’t want to be rude and forgo tipping Lute and Artur, as seemingly bad as their advice had been.

She had already foregone her tube of lipstick and of course, her precious Lunar Brace. She only had the clothes on her back, in all honesty. Her fingers curled in against her palm in thought and she remembered the ring that she was wearing. She felt the indent of its rhinestone on her palm. 

Eirika admired the ring. It wasn’t even on her ring finger; it was on her index instead. It might have been plastic but it was precious to her all the same. With a strong enough smile, the plastic rhinestone could fool the eye and be passed off as zirconia. It was another piece of costume jewellery that she liked to wear. She had forgotten to take it off in the shower and she could see paint flake off it at the bottom because she had gotten it wet. It hadn’t been like that before and thinking that, Eirika felt a pang of melancholy.

It took more effort than it should have had to take the ring off. Did it take that much effort to put it on this morning? Eirika couldn’t recall. High school, assessments, family and friends: the real world seemed so far away now in this far away land.

“Well, I guess I can spare this.” Eirika lamented. At least this didn’t have nearly as much sentimental value as her cherished Lunar Brace.

Rennac almost looked offended as Eirika finally ripped the ring off her finger. Plastic, it seemed, was a commodity rarer and more valuable than what it was in her own world in which came from. And Eirika placed the ring in the box, slotting it through the lopsided hole in the box that Artur held.

“Thank you muchly, dove before the light.” Artur replied to Eirika.

Rennac simply stared, dumbfounded, that Eirika was now giving away such precious trinkets on her person left, right, and centre. All willy-nilly. She really was a naive girl.

“You’re welcome. I hope to see you again one day.” Eirika said.

She nodded and she turned her back on Artur and Lute. Rennac followed after her. He brushed up against the side of her, giving her a nudging blow with his elbow.

“You didn’t have to give that birdbrain a thing.” Rennac told her. Scolded her, really. “That Lute girl didn’t tell you nothing, even.”

Eirika didn’t listen to Rennac, though. She kept striding through the Labyrinth with no clear course of direction sans her own. As they walked at a quicker pace than before, there was a change in the skies. A hue of indigo or violet to the afternoon light and Eirika could only hope that didn’t mean that dusk was descending. It still felt so early. She hoped it was just the white clouds blocking the sunlight as she moved through the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth itself grew thicker with confusion. More bends and turns and dead-ends than before. None of those cheery sculptures, either. Just those tall, looming obelisks that filled her with dread. Not so much as an engravement on any of them. They were just symmetrical, foreboding objects planted here and there what might not have been random.

Eirika and Rennac travelled in silence. Until Rennac couldn’t take it anymore and he asked.

“That stuff back there…” he attempted to mention it in passing, as casual as he could try but ended up anything but. “Why say it? Why call me a friend?”

“Because you are.” Eirika stated simply. “You may not be much of a friend but you are the only friend I have at all in this awful place.”

Rennac grizzled affectionately, making Eirika smile, all whilst keeping pace with Eirika as she chose their path through the leaf litter corridors of this section of Labyrinth. That was before stopping tracks altogether to squint. Not necessarily at anything in particular as there was nothing in particular to see but still. Rennac stopped and stared.

“Do you hear anything?” Rennac asked Eirika, jolting her from what was a pleasant conversation she was looking forward to. Cheerful company and shortened miles, that sort of thing.

“No?” Eirika offered unhelpfully. 

“Huh.” Rennac muttered with a vague flabbergasted aura about him.

He wasn’t sure - and he didn’t mention it to Eirika - but he could swear he heard something. It sounded like a skittering noise on the bricks. A pitter patter of harried footsteps but it was faint. Cluttered and irregular. Until finally winding about some other way, growing distant. It mustn’t have been anything of consequence, Rennac thought to himself, as Eirika led him closer to where he thought the source of the sound was - or had been.

So, instead of worrying about what was probably a fairy or some other dumb insect, Rennac chose to look on the brighter side. Smug and merry about this development that he was having with Eirika.

“Friend, huh? That has a nice ring to it. Not as nice as the ring of gold coins in a certain pouch of mine but it’s not too hard on the ears.” Rennac joked.

“I’m pleased to hear that, Rennac.” Eirika replied.

Together, she and Rennac stepped through an archway. It was wreathed in hedging and it seemed like yet another maze of everything else they had seen. The hedges, of course, and those obelisks too and yet, before they could even glimpse anything which might have been obscured on the other side of that archway, they heard a deafening roar.

Rennac was scared stiff by the noise. It was long and growling. Pained, in a sense. And it was more than enough of a reason to send Rennac back to where he came. In the spur of the moment, back through that archway was the perfect place to hide. Even if there were those skittering, spattering footstep noises back there. Rennac spun on his heel. Friendship be damned. He tried to flee but Eirika caught him. Her hands clasped at his wrist, her fingertips bumped over the beads of her precious Lunar Brace. She was not letting it - or Rennac - go that easily.

“Don’t you dare!” Eirika barked.

“Keep my stuff, I don’t care!” Rennac barked back.

Rennac struggled in Eirika’s clutches. She was bent down, hunched and furious with him. He tried to pull himself away but Eirika’s fingers only tightened on him. She pulled him back to where they just were. Every step horrid and forced.

“Are you my friend or not?” Eirika asked, scowling but sounding genuinely cut that Rennac would abandon her at such a split second notice.

“No, no I’m not!” Rennac shouted in panic. “I’m not anyone’s friend! I’m a liar and a thief. It’s everyone for themself.” 

Rennac kicked and jumped about. He finally ripped himself from Eirika’s clutches. Or maybe she just let go. Regardless, Rennac stumbled back and he glared at Eirika. His eyes dipped low to where she had stashed his pouch on the belt loops of her jeans. Just low enough for him to reach but it was everyone for themself, wasn’t it? He had her Lunar Brace. She could have his little pouch of goodies. A horrible and unfair fair trade.

“Rennac is Rennac’s friend.” Rennac told her in a way he hoped an awful, naive little girl like Eirika would understand. But he wasn’t interested in sticking around to see if Eirika got the message.

Eirika glared at the bend that Rennac disappeared behind. She heard his footsteps carrying him as quick as he could carry himself. She was half-hearted towards the idea of catching up with him and confronting him again and completely forcing her friendship on him but then she heard it again. That growl. It was agony. But not for her. For the mouth from which the noises were coming from. 

When the noise dissipated, she heard a bubble of giggles. Malicious and mean. Rennac might have been a coward. But she wasn’t. So she turned her back on her so-called friend and set her sights on discovering what was happening in the other direction. What the source of those terrible noises was.

Things weren’t always what they seemed in this place, Eirika told herself as she started to make way to the other side of these hedging. So she was curious what the truth of this new matter was. The loud roaring continued as she drew in nearer. Curious like a cat but just as cautious. She crept through another archway, sticking flat to the hedging to hide herself.

She happened upon a scene of heinous cruelty. She watched as various Goblins, three or four, difficult to tell as they moved so quick, darting about the courtyard with spears and spiked helmets. They were taunting an ugly but poor soul of a monster all tied up its feet to a tree that grew out of the side of a crumbling layer of brick walls belonging to the Labyrinth.

It was with those spears - sticks with more sticks taped onto it, a sharp blade at the end - that they jabbed and jeered at the monster. It continued to wreak its pitiful bellows in pain. Its maw opened wide to reveal flat teeth unevenly spaced in its dirty gums. was a great, hairy beast with a beard. All its fur and hair was coloured a somewhat dark green, like a tarnished emerald. Curiously, it had cat-like ears which were flexed back against its scalp, in between its long, almost bovine horns on either side of its head. It howled and howled again, thrashing about in its upside down bondage.

“If only I had something to throw…” Eirika muttered, lamenting, under her breath.

The Goblins continued to torture the creature with glee and Eirika’s stomach churned. She glanced up at it. It glanced down at her from across the courtyard. It had such soulful eyes. Eirika growled in frustration, feeling guilty when she broke the gaze. She glanced downwards, ears pricked, and she marvelled at a rock which peculiarly drew near.

In ominous reminiscence of the crystal ball down below in the Oubliette with the talking heads, Eirika watched as a lumpy rock rolled close to her. Its movements abrupt and jerky, teasing closer to her. The Goblins were yelling at each other. Egging each other on to poke and prod and provoke the beast all tied up. They were completely distracted.

Eirika bobbed down and nabbed the rock. She thought, for a second, she ought to be suspicious of such a coincidence but that poor beastie was in trouble. She couldn’t leave him be. The rock felt very solid in her hands. It was as big as her hand but lobbed it with ease. She was no marksman, never a shot-putter, but she tried her best.

The rock bonked a Goblin on the head. Spinning it's silly, spiked helmet round and round, confusing the Goblin greatly. The Goblin complained of day turning to night, stumbling and bumbling around. It waved its spear around at random. Great chaos ensued from what had been just one little bump on the head.

One confused Goblin turned to two confused Goblins. The first Goblin struck one of his cruel compatriots across the bum. Eirika suppressed a giggle as that second Goblin screamed out in pain; its fellows not quite so kind as to have some composure. They laughed as they threw accusations at one another. Not sure of who had started what - not even knowing what what was.

The rock returned to Eirika. Rolling across the ground without err. She lobbed the rock at another Goblin. She had more confidence in her shotput this time and for good reason. She knocked its helmet round and round, sending that fellow the opposite way he had been going. Spears stacked against spears. Spears clunked against their helmets and became a turntable of things going wrong for them. Vision impaired, adrenaline high, it was only a good time for Eirika. They barked insults at one another. The tied up beastie the barest memory as they fought one another until they were all bruised and battered.

“Retreat, retreat!” they yelled.

Making neither heads nor tails of the situation, the Goblins hurried on. Still carrying on like hooligans, swinging at one another with their spears. All of them tottered off, leaving the monster behind. All but forgotten. They screamed and shrieked, round the bend and Eirika watched the blades of their spears bob into the distance, behind layers of the Labyrinth’s hedged walls that she would dare not disturb with them around. 

With the Goblins gone, Eirika crept out of her hiding place at the archway. With her shoulders flat and her heart calm, she approached the monster. And whilst she was not afraid of it, it was afraid of her. Whilst thrashing about, it growled at her. The force of its breath caused her hair to fly back; she winced. Its breath carried the odour of wet plants but it wasn’t necessarily a bad smell; it was just morning breath, she supposed. 

But the might of its own terror did spook Eirika. She jumped back. Gave it space. She wanted it to trust her so she remained stalwart. Shoulders relaxed and her expression stern.

“Stop that.” she instructed it. 

It bellowed at her once more. She began to hear more of the quirks of its vocalisation in the din of its voice. A bwa-ha-ha-ing noise, as garbled and strangled as it was with panic and desperation.

Eirika tilted her head, trying to meet the creature’s eyes, “Now is that anyway to treat someone who is trying to help you?” she inquired firmly. She tilted her head more to follow how the creature tilts its own head. Her eyes softened and so did her voice. “Don’t you want me to help you down…?”

Eirika kept tilting her head down until the rest of her body tilted with her. She kept herself bent so that upside down was now right side up. Seeing the creature’s face, up close and personal and the right way, she saw him for a cheery little monster. Green haired, powerfully eyed, a hulking body with a gentle soul within. Tusks protruding from his mouth and a triangular nose squashed out wide.

“Dozla down…” the Creature murmured.

“Dozla?” Eirika prompted the monster. “Is that your name?”

She lifted a hand and the rest of her body followed. The monster ceased his thrashing and Eirika pulled herself back up. She reached out to the hairy chinny-chin-chin of the monster and it let her scratch his beard. His hair felt wiry and his skin underneath was wrinkly but Eirika pet him regardless.

“Dozla.” the monster confirmed.

“Oh, you seem like such a nice beast…” Eirika murmured before tearing her hand away from the monster’s chin. “Or at least I certainly hope you are what you seem.” Her retracted hand curled protectively against her breast.

But she didn’t sense ill intent from Dozla like she had with Rennac so she may have better luck taming this beast than the Dwarf. Eirika meandered around the side of Dozla. She traced the hair on him, trying to reach out and keep him consoled. Dozla groaned as she did so: t’was a neutral noise which Eirika wasn’t sure the meaning of other than _don’t stop_.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you down.” Eirika promised him but as soon as she took her hand off him, he delved back into that primal panic.

Moaning and groaning, terrified of being dropped on his head - or worse. Left for dead. Strung up just as he was before Eirika came along.

Eirika’s eyes followed the thick twining of the rope. She saw it inch along the branches in thick rolls, strangulating the tree and it was foisted back down, darted between brick debris, and knotted into the roots. She ducked down at the base of the tree and set to work unpicking it. She tugged and pulled at the coils until it loosened.

Blam!

Dozla hit the ground with a thud. Eirika yelped. And Dozla moaned. The whole of his back hitting the ground first and then his horns and then his head. It was a series of quick but awful bounces but at least the rope fell apart at his bound legs.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Eirika exclaimed as she raced to her feet.

Dozla began to pick himself off the ground. The sheer size of him finally dawning on Eirika. He looked smaller all tied up. But with the ropes slipping off him, he was free to show off his gargantuan shoulders and Eirika noticed that he had a prosthetic right foot. A boot of armour filled with wood attached to his stump. He was shaggy and grand, murmuring to himself as he put a huge hand to his head.

Eirika petted Dozla’s shoulders with concern. He didn’t swat her off as his eyes adjusted. Eirika hoped he wasn’t concussed as he brought his head up to her eye line. 

“You… girl…” he grunted. “You… friend?”

“That’s right, Dozla,” Eirika said, encouraging Dozla’s attempts at being lucid and verbose, “I’m Eirika and I am trying my best to help you.”

“Ah… Eirika…” he said, only to sigh and groan thereafter. 

Dozla sounded a little bit dazed and confused. But he managed to get up, all but unassisted. Eirika felt largely useless as she tried to keep him steady as he got to his feet. His organic one clinking on the uneven bricks below in a noise that his other foot didn’t make quite so noisily. Although, it was that huge mouth of his making the most noise as he groaned and panted, rising to the full of his height. He was something of a square-looking monster but he was certainly big.

“Are you okay?” Eirika asked hopefully.

Dozla looked at her. At first, his eyes seemed vacant but his eyes drew in closer with a sharper than Eirika expected look. He was still panting, though. A raucous noise that was hard on the ears.

“You… Eirika.” he said.

“Y-Yes, I’m Eirika…” she replied.

“Eirika friend.” Dozla continued.

Dozla took a step forward, hands in front of him. Eirika took a step back. She had a feeling she knew what Dozla was about to do - pick her up into a bone-crushing bear hug - but even if it was meant as a friendly gesture, it carried risk.

“Hold on,” she said, quick and defensive, “now just wait a second.” She raised her hands and Dozla stopped in his tracks, becoming sluggish. “I just want to ask you a question.”

“Hm, what?” Dozla grunted.

“I have to get to the Castle at the centre of the Labyrinth, do you know the way?” Eirika asked.

Dozla stood, silent, and Eirika waited until his maw finally opened with a single word: “No.”

Eirika sighed. She couldn’t say she was entirely surprised by this reply, nor was she entirely disappointed by it. She glanced around.

“You don’t know either, huh?” she lamented. “I wonder if anyone at all knows how to get through this Labyrinth.”

Staring off to the distance, Eirika thought about Rennac. He might have been the one to do it, actually. She hoped he was alright. But she also suspected that he was probably cursing her, spitefully hoping that she would never fulfil her quest, and growling about her inability to navigate the Labyrinth right now.

“We’ll get there-” Eirika attempted to console Dozla who looked guilty that he couldn’t help her to a finite detail. “Hang on, have those always been there?”

She could have sworn that a moment ago, it had all been hedging, just beyond the tree that Dozla had been strung up. And even if it wasn’t hedging, it should have been the same, crumbling brick walls as the rest of the Labyrinth. Now it was all restored and noble. Fancy. She saw two dark wood doors in the mantle of the clay light walls of the Labyrinth.

Eirika drew in closer. Glancing between the two doors. The doors were taller than Eirika and just tall enough to accommodate Dozla. They looked remarkably alike save for the knockers. Both were bronze but the faces were different. The door to the left had a feminine face with bright eyes; the ring of the knocker going through her ears. In contrast, the door to the right had a chubby-cheeked masculine face with the ring of the knocker going through his mouth. Aside from the differences, they did have commonalities such as both being very cute cast in bronze. 

“What do you think, Dozla?” Eirika asked, standing part way between both doors with Dozla’s hulking form hovering close by. “Which should we choose out of these two?”

“Didn’t your mother teach you?” snapped the girl of the pair. “It’s very rude to stare, hmph!”

Eirika blinked. She hadn’t been expecting that either of them would talk but of course they would. A lot that shouldn’t speak tended to have a voice down here in the Labyrinth.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I’m sorry. I meant no offence. I was just wondering which door to use.”

“What?” barked the Door Knocker.

Muffled, the other Door Knocker began to speak, too, “Its no good asking her, she’s as deaf as a post.” 

Eirika looked around, towards the other Door Knocker. There was a slight slur to this Door Knocker’s words, unsurprising since he had something in his mouth he couldn’t remove.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!” shouted the girl of the pair. “Another manner your mother should teach you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it but…” the boy of the pair apologised, startled. His voice was strained and boyishly irate.

“Wait a second,” Eirika huffed as she skipped towards the boy of the pair, “I can’t understand you.”

“What were you saying?” asked the girl, frantic.

Eirika ignored her whilst she focused on the boy. She planted her hand either side of the bronze orb at the bottom of the ring and reefed the ring from the boy’s mouth. He groaned pleasurably as Eirika removed it. She passed back the offending object to Dozla who inspected it curiously. The Door Knocker, meanwhile, smacked his lips together, getting used to the feeling of the ring no longer weighing down his mouth. He looked sublimely happy.

“Oh, this feels much better, thank you muchly, ma’am.” he said. “Its an utter pleasure to make your acquaintance, too, my name’s Franz and that’s Amelia.”

“That’s good hear, my name is Eirika, by the way… It’s good to meet you - and you as well, Amelia-”

“Huh?” Amelia cried out, knowing someone had spoken but she couldn’t hear a thing.

“But, um, what were you saying about Amelia?” Eirika asked.

“Oh, she can’t hear a thing so it's a bit difficult to make conversation with her.” Franz explained.

“Mumble, mumble, mumble!” Amelia cried out, frustrated. “It’s not my fault you don’t speak up.”

Franz erred. “We try to get along anyway… She’s my dear friend even if we have our ups and downs…”

“I still can’t hear you.” Amelia complained.

“So, um, where do these doors lead?” Eirika asked.

“What?” Amelia barked.

“We don’t know… We’re just the knockers.” Franz lamented.

“I see, thank you, well I might try talking to Amelia then…” Eirika replied. 

She glanced at Dozla again. He seemed to be having a lot of fun playing the ring that she had removed from Franz’s mouth. It had been so heavy to Eirika but to him, it was a lot lighter. Regardless, brushing back her attention to where it needed to be, Eirika moved herself over to Amelia, putting her hands on the broad panels of Amelia’s door. It felt surprisingly refined, like steel, on her fingertips despite being old wood. She kept pressing on the door, coming to the realisation that there was no doorknob despite having door knockers.

“How do I get through?” Eirika asked.

“Pardon?” Amelia asked in reply.

“Knock, and the door will open.” Franz helpfully piped up.

“Excellent.” Eirika replied.

She was thinking that she might use Franz’s door but she couldn’t leave Amelia like this. Not when she had helped Franz by removing the ring from his mouth so it was time to do the same for Amelia. Eirika grabbed either side of the ring, where it plugged up Amelia’s ears. Unfortunately, unlike Franz’s, it wasn’t quite so easy to dislodge.

Amelia looked disappointed. “No use, huh?” she murmured but Eirika was not quite so easily dismayed.

“Can you help me, Dozla?” Eirika asked.

“Yes.” Dozla grunted.

Eirika beamed as she stepped aside. Dozla dropped the ring that he had been playing with and it clattered on the ground. Amelia panicked as Dozla approached her. Before she could even stutter out a word, Dozla freed the ring from inside Amelia’s ears. Her eyes widened - and not with fear.

“...Is that birdsong, I can hear?” Amelia asked. “Oh, I haven’t heard birdsong in years and years.”

“That’s great, Amelia.” Franz chirped.

“Franz!” Amelia exclaimed. “I can hear you too!”

“That’s wonderful.” Eirika grinned; she then angled herself towards her beast of a companion. “But Dozla and I best be going, you two enjoy all the lovely conversations you two can have.”

“Thank you, we will.” Franz enthused.

Eirika then pointed to Franz’s door and Dozla understood what she meant. He lumbered up to Franz’s door and now it was his turn for a healthy dose of fear. Dozla rapped on the bronze bit where the orb at the bottom of the ring once rested against. Franz cringed as the noise was loud and resounding but the door opened.

“Thank you very much for your help.” Eirika said. Her shoulders jerked up suddenly when Dozla tossed away the ring. It clattered on the ground.

The door that Franz belonged to swung open. He laughed awkwardly, spooked by the noise as well. “We can very much say the same about you. Safe travels.” 

“Yes, yes, thank you very much and a pleasant afternoon to you as well, bye-bye now.” Amelia added.

“You are both very sweet, I hope we can meet again someday but for now, I have to keep going.” Eirika farewelled them.

She waved them goodbye as well as she headed through the opened door. Dozla lugged himself behind her. And together, they saw to the other side of the door and it was nothing like Eirika expected. As she wandered further into this new location of the Labyrinth, she heard giggling and chatting belonging to Franz and Amelia, excitable and adorable, and then a gentle slam. The door had closed behind her as she looked out to all in front of her.

The Labyrinth was a structure which, for the most part, was pruned and tidy. Endless walls and very little greenery. All beneath an endless sky of blue and a hot sun. This was an untamed forest that blocked out the sky. The weather was stickily humid and muggy, as though it were on the cusp of an intolerably warm rain. Crickets chirped unseen in burrows at the base of huge trees. Eirika also heard the trickle of a creek but she couldn’t see one in the muddy ground underfoot, upheaved and difficult of terrain. But ever undaunted, Eirika continued forth. Dozla was not quite so enthused, groaning, his gait made awkward as he kept ripping up mud and debris with his prosthetic. 

With the sky blocked out, it felt as though time would stand still for them but Eirika was unsettled by the notion. With the hours that she had jeopardised in the caverns against the Goblin King Valter, she knew time was precious.

So did Ephraim and time was being increasingly fleeted from him as well as he was kept like a pet in the Goblin King’s throne room. But it was also getting increasingly hard for him to even remember that. 

A Goblin polished the Goblin’s King right boot. His left boot was hiked up over the arm of the throne as the Goblin King lounged. And most curious of all, he had a pet on his lap: a four year old Ephraim. The Goblin King Valter bounced Ephraim on his propped up knee but Ephraim snapped at him. Baby teeth gnashing at him and the cutest, most furious glare that he could muster. The Goblin King wagged his fingers in front of Ephraim’s mouth, trying to encourage him but the four year old was too slow.

“He’s a lively little chap. I think I’ll call him Valter when this is all over. He’s got my eyes.” the Goblin King Valter mused.

The Goblins all around him laughed. Not that they really knew what they were laughing at. Though it did seem hilariously strange to see their ominous and malevolent King with a toddler in his lap, doting on it as only he knew how by riling it and its little nippers up. The Goblin King’s gaze lingered on the clock as he twinkled his fingers enticingly for Ephraim. Still, looking up, dulled by the fact that Ephraim had yet to bite him at all, the Goblin King Valter couldn’t help but wonder how the younger sister - now well and truly older than her older brother - was doing. 

And for the record, Eirika was doing swell.

But whilst Eirika was doing swell, Dozla was not quite so swell. The forest that she and Dozla were wading through was growing darker. The trees were growing in closer and closer clumps as well. Cobwebs were strewn about between the trees, some were rank with moss as well. It was enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies, let alone anyone as big and rugged as Dozla.

“It’s creepy…” he murmured out.

Eirika glanced at him. “Who would have thought?” she exclaimed, more playful than insulting or so she hoped. “Someone like you? Scared? Faced Goblin Soldiers head on and tied up? Naw. But do you want to hold my hand?”

Dozla nodded.

Eirika nodded with a sweet expression. She offered her hand to Dozla and he took it most eagerly. He piled on both his hands onto hers and Eirika found a grip upon the ridges of his worn, leathery hands. She continued to lead him through the forest; upon not so much as an animal’s track.

“See?” Eirika said, her hands loosening from Dozla’s grip. “Nothing to be afraid of at all.” 

She had spoken with a flourish and as she looked out through the glade, Eirika was struck by the beauty of the forest. The floating mists that descended through the forest; the way the leaves glimmered in the low light. It took her breath away.

It struck Dozla as well. Though not quite the same way. Where she looked up, continuing on, he looked down and was soundlessly vanished by the forest.

Eirika frowned as she took a few more careful paces through the forest. Over protruding roots and jagged rocks before she realised that something was amiss. Her heart tremoured as she looked around. She passed a threshold of two gigantic trees that half edged towards each other, reaching out to one another creating a ceiling that was not unlike an archway.

“Dozla?” she called out. “Dozla, where are you?”

She had grown so used to the noise of how he moved that it became alarming that she couldn’t hear it anymore. To say nothing of the fact that such a monster should stand out but then again. Everything around here was in shades of green, just like the fur upon Dozla’s hide. She kept calling out her name as she cautiously stumbled through another patch of the forest.

But she still couldn’t see him. She scanned her surroundings, scrying with her eyes for any sign of the beasties. The tremors in her heart turned to something much worse. Her heart was beating out of her chest. She called for Dozla until she called for him with a raw throat. Until she called out for the most hopeless hope of all.

“...Rennac?” Eirika cried out, tears bubbling in her eyes. “Please, Rennac, are you there?”

The peculiar thing about the Labyrinth was how it watched and how it listened. How coincidence aligned within its endless realm. Rennac heard Eirika’s faint voice, scratchy with her suppressed sobs and his heart leapt from his chest. 

The forest grounds that Rennac had been traversing were rockier than those which Eirika was travelling through. He was coming from the otherside. Where it was hillier with sparser grass. Where there were eerie faces made in rocky outcrops that Rennac passed by, ruining the illusion of pareidolia upon discovering that the outcrops overlapped and were not one on top. His Dwarven gait hurried as he heard Eirika call for his name. He swallowed hard and felt guilty of abandoning her. The feeling wracked him harshly. They were supposed to be going separate ways and yet the roundabout of the Labyrinth had drawn them close together once more.

“I’m comin’, Eirika.” he exclaimed.

Rennac urged himself to bolt towards her voice. He turned hard on the heel of his boot and before he could pick up any momentum, he was stopped by a familiar figure.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t you?” the Goblin King tutted.

He looked fabulous, back against one of the rocky outcrops. Dishevelled yet luxuriant. A hand remained possessive on the relaxed stance of his lance by his side. The heel of his boot leveraged on the outcrop that he laid against, cocky and sluggish. His eyes were thin and malevolently probing Rennac and how he stood with the awkward gait his fleeing interrupted. 

Rennac glared. Grunted. A growl in his throat which could never be fully unfurled. His demeanour was defiant and that intrigued the Goblin King. He smiled dirtily. 

“And where do you think you’re going?” the Goblin King inquired with cold curiosity. 

Rennac gawked like a fish out of water, eyes going wide. “Oh, uh, well… the little lady gave me the slip but, er, I hear her right now. So time to, well, uh, you know. Take her back to the beginning of the Labyrinth and all that. Just like you told me to.”

“I see.” the Goblin King murmured.

Eirika’s voice filled the air as she cried out, “Dozla!” 

Upon hearing his beloved’s voice, the Goblin King ached to move. He languidly pulled himself from how he lounged upright against the outcrops of rock behind him. He sauntered closer to a wiry tree bedecked with crows but no leaves. And he found high ground that allowed him to tower all the more over a Dwarf such as Rennac.

“For a moment I thought you were running to go help my dear Eirika.” the Goblin King drawled.

“That would be stupid.” Rennac said, lying through his teeth.

The Goblin King laughed agreeably. “That it would, that it would…”

“You bet it would. I mean, after all the warnings you gave me? No way, missy.” Rennac said.

He started to laugh, stumbling around and trying to escape the Goblin King’s clutches but he was surprisingly swift in his size. He lurked around, watching Rennac’s footing and then swooped down. Crouching low so that they were all but nose to nose.

“Oh, dear, poor Reinhardt.” the Goblin King murmured.

“Rennac.” the Dwarf grunted.

The Goblin King reached out and placed his right hand, clamping down, on Rennac’s shoulder and he hissed in Rennac’s ear, “I’ve just noticed something,” he sounded venomous, “but your lovely jewels are missing.”

“Uh- oh, yes. So they are.” Rennac said, awkwardly patting himself down. “My lovely jewels. Just let me think. Uh, er-”

“Dozla!” Eirika’s voice broke out beyond Rennac and the Goblin King’s terse conversation.

“I better find them.” Rennac lamented unconvincingly. “But first. I better take the little lady back to the beginning of the Labyrinth, just like we planned.”

Rennac couldn’t have tried to get out of his and the Goblin King’s conversation faster. He backed away like a wily prey animal before turning his back on the Goblin King. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get away at all from the vile man at all.

“Wait.” the Goblin King commanded of him.

Uncertainly, Rennac turned back around. He was slow to do so.

“I have an even better plan… Rennac.” the Goblin King purred. “Give her this.”

He allowed his lance to swirl one way and moved his hand in the other, asymmetrical and intriguing. The Goblin King produced that wily crystal ball once more. He toyed with it on the edge of his crooked wrist and let it roll down his forearm, mesmerisingly, impossibly, before allowing it to rear back to the safety of his palm. He then tossed it to Rennac who managed to catch it, if poorly. Inside the mitt of Rennac’s hands, the crystal ball transformed. He regarded it cautiously but it appeared to be just a simple peach now but he had his rightful suspicions of it regardless.

“A little present for her.” the Goblin King smirked.

“I-It’s not gonna hurt her, is it?” Rennac fearfully asked.

“Oh, now why the concern?” inquired the Goblin King cruelly.

“Trick her, mislead her, deceive her: I’ll do anything of them’s sorts but I won’t touch so much as a hair on her head, I won’t harm her. Do you understand me? It’s principles, you know. Or, well, I suppose you don’t.” Rennac attempted to explain himself.

The Goblin King laughed, flat and malicious. “Oh, come now, Ramon, you truly think that I would do something to my dearest Eirika?”

“Uh, yes.” Rennac bluntly replied.

“You wound me, Renning.” the Goblin King said.

“My apologies, your Majesty…” Rennac replied, he lowered his head and spoke in a barely there way.

The Goblin King rolled his eyes, he folded one arm against himself but kept the other steady against his lance. “She’s gone and made you soft, hasn’t she?”

“N-No, what makes you say that?” stammered Rennac.

The Goblin King had an odd look in his eyes. There was a strange glimmer of moonlit pining, mad and of lunacy, in those harsh eyes of his. He played with his lance, running his fingers along the ridges of it. For a moment, he seemed more like a smitten schoolboy than a tyrant monarch.

“She’s bewitching, no?” the Goblin King mused, pining, only to clash such dreams of a softer love by contorting his face to a grotesque expression. “But she’s vain and childish. Whatever she’s told you is of fleeting substance and what did she tell you, hm? A repulsive little scab like you? Did she call you her bosom companion? Or even worse… her friend?”

The Goblin King stabbed the butt of his lance towards Rennac. Rennac narrowly avoided the hit but he was wounded regardless by the Goblin King’s cruel words. 

“N-No, that would be ridiculous, sir.” Rennac murmured. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Now, you will give her that peach and have her eat it or else, Rennac, or I will dump you straight into the Bog of Eternal Stench myself.” the Goblin King said. He reached down and grabbed Rennac’s scalp. He shook him this way and then that as he made his commands of Rennac.

“Understood, trust me, it's well understood.” Rennac promised desperately.

“Good.” snarled the Goblin King.

Rennac looked down at the peach. He held it cautiously. Its fuzz was abnormally normal against his fingertips. It looked like an ordinary peach but he suspected it was a crueller weapon than its sweet scent would allude to. Rennac sucked in a breath and he tried to think of where Eirika’s voice had come from. He threw a sorry look over his shoulder before trying to scurry off. He passed by the rocky outcrop, holding that peach like his life depended on it. 

Rennac nodded and the Goblin King smiled a snarly smile. Rennac looked fit to escape but ever playful - and ever cruel - the Goblin King could not simply allow that. As Rennac stepped into the steeples of that rocky outcrop, the Goblin King spoke up.

“One last thing, by the way.” he piped up, maliciousness dripped off his voice.

Rennac sheepishly turned back to him. “Yes, your Majesty?” His voice wavered.

“I just had the most revitalising thought. If my precious peach,” the Goblin King snickered, “if she were to kiss you, I would make you a prince.”

Rennac stared, confounded by such an admission.

“Prince of Stench.” the Goblin King laughed hideously. 

“I understand.” Rennac snapped.

“Then go forth but understand that minx is not your friend.” the Goblin King snarled. “Now be gone with ye.

Harrow greatly by this last final exchange, this time, Rennac did flee. The Goblin King had no further requests, demands, or commands of him. Thank goodness. He was thoroughly shaken by the cruel words that the Goblin King did have him; his heart raced and his tear ducts, which had never worked a day, were attempting to now. Rennac did check over his shoulder once more and in that dying meadow were only black birds in that dying tree. The Goblin King was gone. Disappeared.

“Dozla?” Eirika called out once more.

She wandered aimlessly through the forest. It was filtered with a terrible yellow colour now. Concern saturated her face as she paid no heed to the forest floor as she searched for her friend. She drew in deeper into the forest when she heard a twig snap. She hoped it was Dozla. She wanted so badly for it to be Dozla. And so she followed that tiny noise deeper into the forest.

But what she happened upon was not the monster she knew but an entirely new species of beasties who made this part of the forest their den. And based on how they cast wary glares at Eirika as she drew in closer to them, she was made to feel as though she were intruding. The four of them were all gathered around a campfire.

“M-My apologies…” Eirika stuttered out, uncertain how to feel as all their eyes bore into her.

They were a horde of strange creatures. All of them beaked and feathered but had different colourations. Two were of the same fiery red-orange, however, though one was far taller, and much more willowy, than the other. They both wore raiments and scarves. There was one which was a pinky-magenta colour with violet eyes; this one wore a raiment as well, but around her waist. And then there was the largest of these creatures in the quartet. Unlike its friends, this one wasn’t of reddish colouration but was instead green with something scarred across its beak and above that scar, some sort of brown-purple, leather headguard.

Around the firepit, they were banging on drums and even each other. They were bobbing their heads. It was almost tribal and the vast majority of them seemed to be cheerful in their musical endeavours but there was something eerie about it. Especially how they stopped now that Eirika had shown up.

“I - I didn’t mean to interrupt anything…” Eirika continued to stutter.

“Nonsense!” screamed the biggest and burliest of these avian-like monsters.

Eirika jumped out of her skin.

The monsters jumped from their spots along fallen logs and other makeshift chairs. They began to swirl and inspect Eirika. She stiffened and allowed it.

“The more the merrier we say.” the taller of the orangey-red avians said.

“Yeah, yeah!” the tiniest of them said.

“We’re the Mercenaries and we want you to party with us tonight, eh? C’mon, what’s yer name, pretty lady? I’m Gerik, these are my chicklings, Tethys, Marisa, and Ewan.”

Eirika smiled but she felt rather stung by the flattery, especially as they hovered. “That’s so kind of you,” she awkwardly replied, “but I best be going. I have some things I need to do but maybe some other time.”

“Oh please,” purred Tethys, “nothing like living in the present, darling.”

Tethys leaned in and she ticked Eirika with a feather upon one of her harpy-like wings. There were flexing claws at the end but the feathers were more menacing as they wisped beneath Eirika’s nose. She sneezed and Ewan laughed.

“We just want to have a good time - and you look like you need one.” Gerik said.

“Yeah, we ain't that scary, are’s we?” Marisa asked, more rhetorical than anything else.

“I don’t think so.” Ewan chirupped. 

Eirika glanced at Ewan and smiled almost fondly. He was rather adorable. Teeny-tiny and downy, exactly like a baby bird - save for that reptilian tail behind him, it whipped about excitably. He looked fairly harmless, so Eirika could suppose that the other three, despite their unusual or rough around the edges quirks could be too. But then Ewan showed off an incredibly cute trick.

His eyes popped out of his head. He squeezed his face in on itself and then bang. His eyes popped out of his head and Tethys laughed. Ewan managed to catch them, he juggled them for a moment. Eirika was unable to look away and then the little creature pushed them up close to her.

“What do you think?” he asked.

He offered his eyeballs up to Eirika a little bit closer to her. He bounced on the edge of his heels; Tethys and Marisa leaned in to admire them as well. Eirika’s stomach turned. Ewan’s eyes were wet and shiny, staring up at her with wide brown irises.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Ewan said. “Now watch this.”

“Ooh, this is my favourite part.” Marisa cooed.

Eirika didn’t want to know. But unfortunately, she had no choice in the matter.

Ewan beamed and he kept beaming as he tossed his eyeballs up. Not to juggle them but to catch them in his mouth like lollies, as little boys were prone to do. Eirika made a strangled noise as she watched, starkly different to the deep bellied laugh of Gerik as he watched too. Even Tethys seemed a touch amused but Marisa was easily the most interested in the trick.

Ewan swallowed hard and he tipped his face forward for Eirika to see. Somehow, miraculously, his eyeballs had returned to their rightful place inside his sockets.

“Ew!” Eirika exclaimed, recoiling.

“It’s my favourite trick.” Ewan laughed, blissfully ignorant to how disgusted Eirika was.

“It’s my favourite too.” Marisa added and she pet the top of Ewan’s head.

But Tethys swung a pitiful, sideway glance at Eirika. “Not quite your thing, hon?” she asked.

“N-No, not quite.” Eirika stammered out. “I should best be going-”

“Aw, don’t be like that, here take my hand,” Tethys said and Eirika watched as she gracefully put her right claws to her left wrist, with just the slightest twist her hand came off without a hitch, and she offered it to Eirika benevolently, “and let’s have a dance.”

Eirika’s fingers twitched as she was made to hold Tethys’ hand. Her stomach dropped. Especially as she saw that Tethys’ fingers were still moving as Eirika held her lopped hand. And Tethys herself began to approach Eirika. Her other hand, still connected to her bowing, almost wing-like arms made a suave path for Eirika’s matching side.

“Tethys is a great dancer, y’know.” Marisa added.

Tethys laughed, flattered, as she approached Eirika. A sway and saunter, elegant and mystical, in her demeanour. Eirika kept walking backwards, careful steps intermediated with glances forwards, at Tethys who continued closer to her. Until there was nowhere for Eirika to escape. She felt her back against Gerik’s front, he loomed over her with a beam. Completely ignorant to how Eirika felt amongst him and his merry band of Mercenaries. Eirika dropped Tethys’ hand on the ground but she hardly minded as she was finally able to get up close and personal with Eirika. It was all culminating with a grinding action down, crotch to crotch, that made Eirika blush.

“Please,” Eirika begged, “I really must be going. Leaving, please.”

“Aw, don’t go losing your head over this.” Gerik told her.

Eirika tilted her head up against him. Her hair tangled in his puffed out feathers and it was strange how a creature could beam so widely with a beak upon his face. Still, she was trapped between him and Tethys, and they both seemed intent on riling her up. Gerik’s scolding of her alluding to how exactly he intended to do so.

In the midst of that beaky grin, Gerik lifted his own clawed hands to his head. He planted them either side of his head and with the barest flex of his muscles, he managed to remove his head. Eirika’s stomach plummeted - and Gerik found it hilarious. His removed head laughed heartily and even Tethys stopped to giggle.

“Ooh, ooh, over here!” Ewan cried.

“No, no, to me!” Marisa yelled.

Gerik glanced between them before deciding to punt his own head to Marisa. Eirika was aghast as she watched him kick his own head to Marisa who caught him in a barrelling grip. Although, in their distraction, Eirika was able to side step Gerik’s body but Tethys still had her eye on her, the most eerie of all.

Marisa bounced Gerik’s head up and down, as though she were dribbling a basketball. She then kicked it to Ewan who caught it with glee, bouncing up and down. He beamed all big and wide before kicking Gerik’s head back to him. He caught it with ease and replaced it upon the fluffy stump of his limey green feathered neck.

“You sure you still don’t want to hang out? We’re the chilliest bunch in the land, you know.” Gerik boomed.

“I mean look at you, you poor doll, your chin is dragging on the ground, you look like you could use some R and R.” Tethys murmured, sultry.

“Yeah!” Ewan cried out. “Shake your pretty little head!”

“We’ll show you exactly how to do it.” Marisa purred gutturally. 

And that was the moment they all pounced. They four of them clamoured for Eirika. Holding her down and groping at her. She struggled, writhing in their clawed mitts, but it was utterly ineffective in their whooping and hollering. Marisa and Tethys had Eirika by the arms; Ewan sat at her feet, clutching at her legs; and it was Gerik who had been given the honours of making sure that Eirika had lost her head just like the others in this party.

Gerik grabbed at Eirika’s head. His paws clawed at her as he tried to get a good grib on her slippery smooth human skin. Not a nary feather to be seen on the girl - or even a gill or bit of fur. Just her lank hair. But Gerik was undeterred as he kept at it. Pulling and pushing, tugging at Eirika’s head with great gusto. 

Eirika struggled, heaving and grunting, as she tried to fling either Marisa or Tethys off her arms and tried to kick Ewan off her feet but it just made them pile on worse.

“Why ain’t your head comin’ off?” Gerik growled.

“Why would it?!” Eirika exclaimed back.

Marisa grabbed at Eirika, strands of hair getting caught in her claws as she grasped onto Eirika’s ear. She gave her a tug one way and Tethys imitated in the other way.

“Yeah, it's screwed right on.” Marisa complained.

“Then let’s just take her apart!” Gerik laughed.

In his laughter, he crunched in on himself and his head came off when his shoulders rippled out again. He bounced his own head on the stump of his neck, passing it between his shoulders. And his grand enthusiasm spurred on the other members of his party.

Eirika’s heart raced. She attempted to rip herself from them before they could rip her apart. In her desperation, she caught Gerik’s head and threw him as far as she could. The incessant laughter which once cascaded around her came to a grumbling stop.

“Hey, lady, that’s against the rules-” Ewan attempted to protest but Eirika yanked his head from his shoulders. “Hey that’s my head!”

It was unnerving how easily his chirpy little head came off his neck. Eirika grimaced as she tossed away Ewan’s head but her strategy was picking up speed. It was certainly distracting them long enough that they couldn’t hurt her first so she reefed Tethys and Marisa’s heads next. She chucked them all away with reckless abandon and began to flee.

Their headless bodies wibbled and wobbled around. Stumbling drunkenly in search of their heads. Said heads were bouncing up and down, to and fro towards their bodies which were going in the directions their heads were not. And in the middle of all such bodily chaos, Eirika ran away.

“It’s against the rules to throw other people’s heads!” Ewan’s voice rang out but Eirika ignored him.

She sprinted through the forest. But still that gang of monsters - Mercenaries - wouldn’t leave her alone. They followed her swiftly. Better at navigating the unusual ground below her. They bounced and bounded behind her. Yelling out the rules to their nonsensical games that they played but Eirika tuned them out. She just kept running forward. Darting past twisted, gnarled trees and trying not to sprain herself on unkempt roots protruding underfoot.

“Now we gotta take your head off!” Gerik growled.

Eirika was dosed with panic hearing that. They sounded so cheery and jolly as they hounded her. Closing in on her as she ran as fast as she could. Their whooping and hollering so unintentionally menacing as they hunted her. Eirika hazarded a glance over her shoulder as she squinted through the forest only to find herself at a dead end.

She was backed up against the mossy, lichen-ridden face of a cliff. Her hands clamoured against the sheer of it. She flattened herself against the cliff as she looked out to the greater reams of the forest. She saw evidence of movement but not the movement itself. Where were they?

“Leave me alone!” Eirika screamed.

“We get a free throw, you know!” Gerik yelled.

“Hey lady, you want to take your head off, yeah?” Marisa shouted.

“Sure she does!” Ewan eagerly agreed.

She most certainly did not want that but words failed Eirika as she continued to fail to glimpse these horrid monsters that she had become entwined with. But she could hear them. In how leaves shifted and shuffled; in how twigs snapped and leaf litter stirred in the mire. And for all it was worth, it seemed she was trapped and she could only throw her dire hopes to the sky.

And the sky delivered. 

A coil of rope sailed down from above. Its knotted ended politely tapped her on the shoulder. Eirika was shocked by the sensation, terrified it was one of her pursuers. But she looked up and she was, instead, shocked by the person who had released it for her.

“Rennac!” she gasped at the top of her lungs.

“Grab it!” he snapped.

Eirika nodded. She firmly grasped the rope and she held it tight. She kicked up against the cliff face and started to scale it. The Mercenaries dashed towards her. Clustered just beneath her as she tried to force herself upwards against the sheer vertical ledge of the cliff.

“Aw, don’t you like us, sweetie?” Tethys sighed, sulky the same way smoke was sulky.

“C’mon, take your head off!” Gerik roared from below.

“We’ll grab a saw if we have to!” Marisa added, shouting.

They clustered at the bottom of the cliff face. Eirika had managed to pull herself up above the edge of where they could reach her. Their tails whipped about, gnashing, as they kept shouting jolly threats at her. She tried not to look down but it was difficult. The temptation was terrifying and yet irresistible so she stole glances at them, at how they pounded at the rock and lichen, trying to reach her. At the top of the cliff, where there were the ruins of a parapet, she heard Rennac grunting with much effort as he helped to pull her up.

With Rennac’s help, Eirika managed to climb over the ruined bricking of the parapets. The bodies of the Mercenaries were still at the bottom but they realised that if they threw their heads up high enough along the cliff, they could still menace Eirika.

“Well if you play, we could take off your arm.” Marisa said.

“Come on,” Tethys taunted her, “you don’t need two ears.”

“The game’s almost over.” added Ewan.

Their floating heads were awful. Their ears flapped to keep them afloat in the air before sinking back down. Eirika scrambled forward and Rennac stomped around her. He batted off the heads of the Mercenaries as they kept tossing them up like toys.

“Go on!” he yelled. “Get outta here!”

Half-heartedly, he extended a hand to Eirika who couldn’t be more overjoyed to see him. Eirika grabbed onto it and Rennac helped her away from the ledge. The Mercenaries still called out from below but their cries felt fainter now to Eirika’s ears. It was relieving.

“Oh, Rennac, thank goodness.” she cooed. “You’ve come to help me.”

Rennac trampled off but Eirika was close behind him. Eirika flung her arms back and then embroiled Rennac in a bear hug. He struggled in her arms as she tried to all but pick him up as she embraced him. Her face was dangerously close to his own and as such, the Goblin King’s warning echoed in his ear. Surely not, Rennac thought to himself, surely not and yet, Eirika seemed intent on it in her platonic glee.

“Shoo, now you stop that-” Rennac grizzled.

Eirika laughed. “I knew it,” she murmured, “I knew you were my friend.”

Her lips smacked together and she planted a kiss on Rennac’s cheek, despite how he pawed at her to let go. They stumbled about, leaning heavy to the right, as Eirika clambered all but on top of Rennac to kiss him.

“Stop that!” he barked. “No, don’t - don’t kiss me!”

“Mwah!” Eirika giggled. “Mwah!” His struggling only delighted her more.

But the bad luck and the warnings were already upon them both. As soon as Eirika’s lips had brushed against his leathery skin. The Goblin King Valter’s warning against what would happen were his jealousy be stoked was enacted against them both.

Below a trapdoor opened. Once more they were taken for a rollicking ride into the underground. Eirika screamed as she was sent careening down a slide hewn of rock. It was bumpy and dark, she clung to Rennac for dear life as they were sped, tumbling, into the unknown. Dust flew up around them and they collided with thick cobwebs before finally being spat out at the end of the tunnel.

Rennac slipped violently over the edge. The end of the tunnel was pronounced by an archway at the edge of it all and Rennac had gone the full gauntlet and tumbled over it. In desperation, he reached out for anything. Anything at all. That might serve to save him and all he had been able to was a flimsy root. 

Eirika was barely luckier than him as she came around that final bend in the tunnel. Her legs flailed either side of her, kicking up as she tried to stop herself, extending out her arms, trying to slow how she careened through the tunnel. But she wasn’t concerned for herself, no, she was concerned for what might happen if she were to tumble out and hit Rennac. She had glimpsed how he had the barest thing preventing him from falling out at all. 

Eirika managed to stop herself before she fell off the edge. She scrambled to the side and flattened herself against the great, great outer wall of the Labyrinth. There was the tiniest ledge between her and certain doom - and she was determined to pull Rennac up onto it for it was safer than anything else around here.

Rennac groaned and grunted. Eirika thrust out her hand to him but she felt herself weaken. Her head was spinning but as it adjusted, so did her sense of smell. She hazarded a glance below. The bog that stickily existed at the bottom of the Labyrinth’s cliff face was putrid. Her face twisted with disgust whilst Rennac gagged.

“Ugh, what is that?” Eirika complained.

“The Bog of Eternal Stench!” Rennac spat. He wretched simply speaking of this horrid place’s name.

Eirika leaned out and grabbed Rennac’s wrist. He held on so tightly to the root, Eirika could feel how tense his muscles were simply from holding him. Rennac cast his gaze up at her and for a moment. Eirika saw a pitiful expression beneath the disgust that he was feeling due to the Bog of Eternal Stench. It was there for only a second but she saw it. How Rennac wanted to reject her kindness because he had abandoned her once but he accepted her kindness.

She was his friend and he was hers.

Rennac kicked against the cliffside, trying to find a foothold and Eirika helped to pull him forward. She tugged him forward and pushed her hands further up his arm. At the crook of his armpit, she got the best leverage. Together, they managed to get Rennac up and onto the ledge.

The pair panted as they were finally upright and on their feet. Backs against the wall. By their shoes, the ledge threatened to crumble but now they had something even worse to contend with. The full view of this terrible, terrible swamp on display. It gurgled and it bubbled. It spat and hissed and made noises of flatulence. Eirika couldn’t begin to describe how it smelt when its name - the Bog of Eternal Stench - made it sound so harmless, even downright pleasant, compared to the true and utterly putrid odour which rose out of it.

Eirika took her first step sideways. She was uncertain and she glanced back to Rennac. He glared.

“If you’re going to complain: don’t.” he warned her.

“I - I won’t. I’m just. Happy to still be standing…” Eirika replied, thinking about what Rennac had told her well before about this place and how it clung to one well after an escape…

“Good.” Rennac said.

“Good…” Eirika agreed.

She kept scuttling onwards but she kept feeling Rennac’s eyes on her neck. It was a heated gaze so she hazarded another glance towards him before letting her eyes dart back to the far reaches of the ledge. It seemed every bit as endless as the inside of the Labyrinth. It was hopeless. But she chewed her lip, she felt as though Rennac would speak soon - and he did.

“Now why did you go and do a thing like that?” he accused her.

“I hope you are not referring to me rescuing you.” Eirika replied in an equally dirty and irate voice.

“No, I mean kiss me. Yuck.” snarled Rennac.

Before Eirika could conjure a retort of any description, the ledge beneath them gave way. Eirika shrieked as she stumbled to the side. Her fingers dug into the jagged bricks behind her as she got away from where the ledge weakened. She watched as it gave way, her stomach plummeting with the debris as it was swallowed up by the Bog of Eternal Stench. She gagged as she smelt fresh plumes of the revolting odour that it emitted.

Gawking, but also gagging, Eirika turned her head and was relieved to see Rennac still standing. He looked as spooked as she did. Maybe even more so. His bulging eyes were wide with frenzy.

“Oh thank gosh...” he breathed. Seemingly grateful to still be alive - and also cleanish smelling - after such a close call.

“Don’t pretend to me so hard…” Eirika breathed. She forced herself to calm her nerves and with Rennac by her side, they scuttled past the damaged part of the ledge. “I know you came back to help me, and I know that you’re my friend.”

“Did not and am not.” Rennac lied, growly. “I’ve just come to get my property back.”

“Uh-huh…” Eirika replied.

She chewed thoughtfully both on her reply to Rennac but also how she crossed the next issue in the ledge. Another section claimed by time, or worse, interference. Eirika grunted as she split her legs over the crumbling, blackened section and pulled herself over to the other side.

Whilst Eirika struggled, Rennac stayed put. Though, he did fondle something he had clothed at his belt’s side. 

“But also to give you… to, um give you…” Rennac mumbled.

“Give me what?” Eirika asked as she made it safely to the other side. She inched further to the right so as to give Rennac space so he could cross, too.

Rennac shook his head. Now wasn’t the time, he told himself. But in his absent-mindedness, his haste to cross to the other side of this ditch in the ledge became waste. Beneath his boots, the brick began to crumble again. Rennac made a garbled noise as he was all but helpless to slip downwards.

“No!” Eirika yelled.

She launched herself forward to catch Rennac before he fell. She tried to grab him but as he went down, skidding on the falling bricks as big as he was, she went over. Eirika shrieked and Rennac made equally terrified noises in his own guttural tones. And they both went over the edge, primed to be punted into the Bog of Eternal Stench. Eyes clenched closed as they expected a long, long way down. 

However, in a brush of good fortune, that long way down was a lot shorter than either of them expected. They clattered against the ground, making contact with the most unique of sensations. The dry fuzziness of wiry hair rather than the squeaking, squelching bog below. Eirika was held up by something, entangled in whereas Rennac made a face first impact below.

“Huh?” Eirika murmured as she opened hers. “Dozla?”

It had been far too vertigo inducing up there so she hadn’t had a good look below - not that it would have mattered much if she did for Dozla was well camouflaged both in forests and in bogs - but lo and behold. The big beastie was now found and rather concussed to have been found. He groaned as he held an unsteady gaze with Eirika who was very pleased to see him.

“Dozla, it is fantastic to see you again-” Eirika tried to chatter but he waved her off.

He screwed up his face. “Ugh… bad smell. Very bad smell.” he stuttered out in yet more confusion as he was prone to.

Eirika was sympathetic, cringing as she noticed how much stronger the stench was on ground level than on high. It was so much better than on high and the thought made her heart - and her sense of smell - shrivel up inside. 

“Er, but where’s Rennac?” she asked in lieu of an olfactory complaint.

“I’m! Right! Here!” Rennac’s shouting was irate and muffled.

Eirika squinted. She heard struggling; the thwack of feet against dirt but she couldn’t really see anything despite how she glanced around, a touch bewildered. That was, until, Dozla shuffled off. Shifting where he stood and Rennac was revealed beneath him. All but flattened by how Dozla had stood around on him, thumping him over and over with his tail and the like.

Rennac scrambled out from beneath Dozla. Fury blazed in his earth brown eyes as Dozla had more of a merry look in his own expression, utterly unfazed that he might have done anything wrong at all to Rennac. But Eirika was quick to leap to mediate between them. She reached out and patted Dozla’s arm before speaking breathlessly.

“No, no, it’s okay. This is Dozla and he’s my friend, too.” she explained. 

As Eirika explained, she retreated her face into the corner of her elbow to protect her face from that all encroaching odour. Her stomach did somersaults the longer she had to endure it.

“A what?” Rennac growled.

“The bad smell!” Dozla complained, waving his huge hands around in some vain hope of dissipating it.

“Ugh, it's awful.” Eirika complained.

The Bog of Eternal Stench gleefully agreed. It gave yet more burst bubbles of rancid aromas on the grungy green surface of its stagnant waters. 

“Oh my stars…” Rennac pinched his nose as he commiserated amid the gurgling and sputtering. He wretched and gasped for air.

Eirika scanned their surroundings. She hoped to not see Rennac vomiting but she noticed something far more heartening.

“A bridge!” she gasped. “Right over there. Come on.”

Dozla and Rennac both turned their heads, to stare in the same direction that Eirika was fervently gazing at. She intended to lead them deeper into this foul fen and their stomachs turned. But she was right. There was a bridge.

It was somewhat hidden behind a gnarled tree that made up the majority of the glade that obscured it. It was some sort of decaying willow and at its turbulent roots, random bricks had been spread out. Mostly sunken into the mud and mire now. But the bricks led up to a bridge that looked solid and sound, even had walls and details that may have once been neat and elaborate but were no longer. But the stone fed into sticks in the middle before returning to the lips of stone once more and a denser, murkier forest in the bog.

Despite common sense grating them otherwise, the trio moved through the swamp so they could cross that bridge. They stepped carefully, skirting where the bog lapped thick and ominous at its green-brown shores. The bog felt huge and the safe spots along the shore felt few and far between.

“Watch where you step,” Rennac kept reminding them with a grumbling voice, “you step in this stuff, you’ll stink forever.”

Eirika nodded. She kept herself light on her foot, using stepping stones where she could but every hop was a calculated one until she, and her two friends, had made to the eerie plaza which the bridge sprouted from. But like in all good fairy tales, this bridge had a guardian and she was quick to spring out as Eirika approached. From the left, a tiny, furry sprite of a thing leapt out of hiding. Eirika gasped as the creature bounded up to her, she took a step back in fright. 

“Stop, I say!” declared the little Creature, coat shining in ivory and peridot. She lifted a staff with a crystal ball adorning its tip.

Eirika grimaced as she kept her hand raised, nose in her sleeve, “Please,” she begged of the cute little thing, “we have to get across.”

Dozla groaned wordlessly but empathetic.

Not that it mattered much to the little one who haughtily shook her head. “Not without my permission. None may cross without it.” she stated.

“Please, I am running short on time in my quest, please.” Eirika begged.

She was astounded that such a compact little thing could pack that much sass and ego. The Creature puffed out her chest as she considered Eirika’s pleading. She was neat and tidy amid what a most disgusting and grimy surrounding. A feathered beret on her head, accentuating her squirrel-like features, if squirrels were white and of a pleasantly light green in colour. Curiously, she bore an eyepatch, too.

“And we’ve got to get out of this awful stench, too!” Rennac barked as the Creature still pondered where or not she ought to give permission to the sorry trio they were.

“The smell is bad.” Dozla added, groaning.

“Stench?” The little Creature was scandalised by how they brought it up. “Whatever do you speaketh of?”

“The smell.” Eirika complained.

The little Creature sniffed the air. Her black button nose twitched as she did so. Her brow drew in and the fur upon it wrinkled.

“I smell naught.” she replied in a tiny voice, suspicious of Eirika and company’s claims.

“Ha-de-ha-ha, you’re joking, right?” Rennac sarcastically snarled.

“I am not, peasant. I live and die by my sense of smell.” the Creature boasted. Her tail wagged as she continued to take deep breaths of the air. She sighed contentedly on the exhale and repeated, her demeanour was dreamy. “The air here is sweet and fragrant, truly befitting one such as I.” And then she immediately thrust forward her staff, glaring. “And none shall pass without my explicit permission.”

Dozla groaned, complaining, “It’s horrible…”

“Grr, just get out of our way.” Rennac yelled, stomping his foot, ready to barge past the little Creature with a skirmish and a scrum. 

But the little Creature was quick as she brandished her weapon, putting the orb to Rennac’s chin and getting up close with him. She glared, her eyes turning to hardened beads of emerald as she defended herself.

“I must warn thee, I am sworn to my duty.” she growled.

Rennac glared back at her. He tried to side-step her, shoulder barge her if necessary but she was ruthless. She gave him a senseless swack on the top of his head and then struck him below, against his ribcage. Rennac gasped as he was winded greatly by the little Creature’s brutality.

Eirika ran up to the mouth of the bridge and put her hands either side of Rennac’s shoulders, holding him steady on his feet as he clutched at where the furry little creature had dealt him blows.

“We need to get across.” Eirika insisted with an incensed look in her blue eyes.

“Hold it!” chirped the little Creature. She flung her staff up to Eirika and at its peak, it reached her midsection.

Eirika stopped but she glared fervently down the barrel of the staff and right into the fuzzy little Creature’s green eyes. She waved her staff around for further incentive but Dozla took no heed. At least not until he came too close and she bopped him on the hand with it, he groaned in pain on the recoil. What a senselessly violent little thing, Eirika thought to herself as she had now seen two of her two friends hit by this creature before them.

But Dozla - and Rennac - retaliated. 

Dozla reached down at the creature and despite how she batted her staff around, he was unfazed. He picked her up by it, lifting her in the air. She kicked and screamed, making a hullabaloo in protest. And Rennac, meanwhile, made his dash for it. He crossed the bridge.

“Put me down, good sir!” screamed the little Creature.

“Rennac!” Eirika yelled.

But she was quickly distracted by how Dozla and the furry little creature kept at it with one another.

He raised his arm, raising her higher with him before soundly dropping her. Finger by finger uncoiled from atop her and then splat. She plummeted down, only to skip back onto her tip-toes.

“En-garde, my beastie!” she snarled, ferity glimmering in her eyes. 

She swiftly lunged at Dozla, rattling him up and down with her staff. He grabbed at her but she was tiny and quick. She jumped up on her back and ferreted through his fur. She pulled herself to the top of his rugged shoulders and struck him repeatedly atop his head - between his horns - with her staff. Dozla grunted with each beating.

“Aha!” she yelled. “I shall conquer this mountain just yet!”

She dived over the top of Dozla’s head and grabbed at his beard. She hung onto it for dear life, dangling just below his chin, with some regret. With her suspended and dangling, she was rendered harmless enough. Dozla attempted to pet the creature’s head but as soon as he put his finger near her mouth, she wasted no time sinking in her ferret-like teeth. As Eirika watched them roughhouse, she couldn’t help but think it was more between a good natured grandfather and his rambunctious granddaughter than any duel of grandeur between adversaries of equal power.

Grunting and growling, Dozla then flung the creature elsewhere. He suckled his finger whilst the creature flew behind them. She hit a tree and for a second, seemed concussed but she leapt up once more. In a flash, she jetted back to her arena of choice at the mouth of the bridge. She yipped and yapped as she swung her staff into Dozla’s backside over and over again.

If she was going to fight with sticks, so was he, reasoned Dozla as he looked around. Lying adrift in the dirt and sickly grass, he saw the perfect weapon and he retrieved it: a great and huge branch with a jagged end. He wielded it as a club, waving it around slowly, trying to sideswipe the creature.

The creature quipped and darted about. Though on the evasive defensive, the Creature could not strike back. Not that it appeared to matter much to her. She laughed cheekily from the bottom of her belly. Her squirrely tail thrashed with glee, as well, as she evaded every slow and cumbersome strike that Dozla half-heartedly tried against her.

But that half-heartedness hid irritation. Dozla groaned but it transformed into a growl. The little creature could sense that he was gearing up for something. Something big. Dozla reared back and lifted the branch that he wielded far above his head. The little Creature’s wagging tail came to a dead stop. Oh dear, she clearly thought to herself. 

Dozla huffed gruffly and the little Creature sped away. She bounded like a weasel into the nearest hidey-hole that she could spot. She disappeared into a hollowed out tree trunk. Dozla watched her tail disappear and with a forced grunt, he struck the trunk with the branch.

Eirika squeaked in terror. She watched as Dozla smashed the hollow to bits and pieces. It turned to dust beneath the weight of his mite. Dozla groaned wearily. And when the dust dissipated, it was eerily silent; save for how Eirika could only hear her heart beat in her ears as she wondered… Wonder if…

“Oh, enough, you brute!” screamed the little Creature.

Eirika’s eyes flicked up in disbelief. Dozla breathed heavily and the the little Creature poked her fuzzy, ferret-like snout out the top of the tree. Her paws gripped onto the gnarled rim of a hole in the tree’s cankers. Curiously, Eirika noticed, the eyepatch had swapped to the other side of the Creature’s face and her eye was not damaged either way.

“Enough!” the little Creature snapped again now that she had all attention on her. “Before this day, I had never met my match in battle, yet this noble knight before thyself has fought me to a standstill.

“Are you alright, Dozla?” Eirika whispered as she cautiously drew closer.

“Sir Dozla, if that is thy name, dear sir, now I, Lady L’Arachel, beautiful banisher of darkness, yield to thee. Come, we shall be comrades in arms henceforth and fight for the right as one.”

“Sounds… nice.” Dozla grunted.

L’Arachel, as the small fuzzy creature was apparently named, beamed. And Dozla let something of a smile tug at his lips and his tusks. He seemed fond, enough, as he lifted his paw to L’Arachel. She met him halfway with her teeny-tiny rodent paws and shook a finger to seal their newly born camaraderie. Dozla even helped her out of her tree, holding her carefully.

“Thank you very much.” she replied with a sharp nod.

Eirika was simply relieved that the fighting had stopped but the issue of the smell continued to haunt her. Though her heart was warmed as Dozla held onto L’Arachel preciously.

“I have… acquired a… small creature.” he proudly announced.

He set down L’Arachel and she flung out her arms theatrically, “Well met, Sir Dozla!” she chirped.

“Good. Come on.” Eirika interrupted them derisively. 

L’Arachel hopped in front of Eirika, rising to the full brunt of her claws so she could be as tall as she could be. She glowered, puffing out her chest as she blocked Eirika’s path.

“But my lady,” L’Arachel exclaimed, “you forget my sacred vow.” She shook her head. “I cannot let you pass.”

“But you just said that Dozla is your comrade in arms, surely that means something.” Eirika protested.

“It does, it does.” L’Arachel agreed. “But you simply must understand, my lady, I have taken an oath and I must defend it to the death.”

Dozla frowned, “But the smell-” he protested.

“Okay, let’s handle this logically, hm?” Eirika testily suggested. She took a breath and then calmly asked, “What exactly did you swear?”

“I have sworn with my lifeblood that none shall pass this way without my permission.” L’Arachel replied with a jaunty look on her face and she thumped the butte of her staff on the ground to emphasise her haughty point.

Dozla bellowed softly with disappointment.

“Well… May we have your permission to cross?” Eirika asked.

L’Arachel stared with a fuzzy and bewildered expression. “Well, I, er…” she hesitated.

Dozla glanced at Eirika, just as bewildered as L’Arachel.

“I, uh, well you see… No one’s ever asked me before.” L’Arachel confessed in a tiny voice. “Typically, I am duelled and I am victorious. Or no one at all comes by. Truth be told, ye are the first company I have had in a long, long time. Certainly the most quality as well. I would love to have many a tea party with you both - and even with that wily dastard Rennac that you both associate with - so my answer is. Yes. You have my permission.”

Eirika grinned delightedly. Though, she couldn’t help feel a spot of sorry for L’Arachel. Being a guardian of this bridge, smack bang in the middle of the Bog of Eternal Stench, seemed like a most lonesome gig but she was thankful nonetheless. With a swooping curtsey, L’Arachel stepped aside and Eirika stepped up to the bridge. 

It was now that she realised just how harrowing the bridge was.

The mouth of it was sturdy. Deceptively so. A bricky, stony facade which was ridden with lichen and moss. And it fed into a plank of stone which was cracked and rickety. Sticks, like spears, stuck up here and there to criss-cross and menace. Below the safety zone, thin and creaky, was the depths of the Bog of Eternal Stench which gurgled and belched, smelling utterly revolting.

Eirika stepped up to it regardless. As she cautiously put her feet on the plank. It bended and bowed beneath her weight. Dozla stared, feeling as though he didn’t even fit between the spiked spears as Eirika inched her way downwards.

“Have no fear, my sweet lady,” L’Arachel proclaimed with a flourish of her staff, “this bridge has lasted for a thousand years.” 

She sounded cheerfully chipper about it. Eirika wasn’t quite so certain. It kept teetering this way and that way and ever egotistical, L’Arachel had to prove her beloved bridge’s sturdiness. And so, she tapped the facade of it multiple times. The sound of the crystal orb rapping on the stone was surprisingly tinny. It was also surprisingly powerful. 

The façade of the bridge began to crumble. The facade slipped to nothingness. The Bog all too eagerly swallowed up the debris. And with the façade crumbling, the spears that had decorated the sides of the plank as some vague handrail gave way too. The more the Bog ate, the more the Bog belched. Eirika’s stomach turned but she didn’t have time to comprehend it as she felt the rocking either way of the plank she walked upon. It was giving too.

Eirika shrieked like a shrike as she reached up. She grabbed an overhanging tree branch and dangled above the Bog. Below her, the plank wobbled before bowing completely. It gave in on itself, snapping in half, and dove into the bog. Waves of groggy green water splashed up as Eirika screamed and dangled.

“Huh.” L’Arachel mused. “It seemed solid enough.” She sounded utterly uninvolved and dulled by the incident.

“Rennac!” Eirika screamed. His name was the only prayer her desperate mouth knew to convey how she wished with all her might that the tree branch could withstand her weight. She screamed again, “Rennac!”

Cautiously, the Dwarf reared his head when he heard fear - bright and vibrant and genuine - in Eirika’s voice. He peeked out from around twists of knotted, brown-yellow grass. His jaw dropped as he saw Eirika kick and dangle from the tree. The tree which began to bow; which began to crack with sickening noises.

Dozla murmured, deathly afraid for his friend. L’Arachel, by his side, strangely more proactive but not exactly.

“Fear not fair maiden, I shall save thee!” L’Arachel declared. “Er, somehow.”

Dozla’s murmuring turned to bellows. Deep and rumbling. It shook the ground and all but cascaded over the bubbling surface of the Bog’s waters.

“Sir Dozla, canst thou sit by and howl, when yon maiden needs our help?” L’arachel asked scathingly.

Dozla lifted his head. Widened his maw and puffed out his chest. His lowing was deep and all encompassing; it made for the most splendidly sorrowful song. Even Eirika who thrashed about against her will felt consoled by the melody that Dozla howled out. Dozla closed his eyes to it, really put his heart and soul into it. And it wasn’t just Eirika moved by it; nor even just Rennac and L’arachel as well. The Bog responded to it; the Bog was moved by it. Perhaps most of all out of all Dozla’s serenaded audience.

A boulder on the wayside lurched forward. The layer of brown leaf litter that adorned the top of its rough surface began to shed as the boulder was urged forward. Even just an inch. Dozla continued to howl and the boulder’s rocky movements smoothed out. It rolled towards him, crunching grass underneath it and dust cascaded off it. It picked up speed and tumbled into the Bog without fear.

It rolled through the water, ripples criss-crossed over its determined pull until it sank part-way just below where Eirika shrieked and dangled. She bit her tongue as she looked down below at the boulder and how it waited for her. The Bog stilled as much as it could, still spewing a reeking odour but looking up, Eirika saw the branch she was hanging onto weaken. A crack appeared along the ley lines of its bark. 

She let go.

She was only dropped a foot, maybe less. And she landed with both feet planted firmly on the boulder. It did not move or droop with her weight. Elation filled the whole of her body as she cast an excited to be alive - and somewhat clean smelling - smile over her shoulder to Dozla and L’Arachel. Dozla grinned and his rising chest fell. His song - his howling - ended and he took a shallow, contented breath afterwards. And a crescendo followed.

From the depths of the Bog, rocks and boulders alike rose from the murky bed of it and peaked through the thick, sticky meniscus of the Bog. All at the command of Dozla’s roar. A new bridge emerged from the waste of the last one. Eirika took one step and then turned around. She cupped her mouth to yell across the fen.

“That’s incredible, Dozla!” she yelled.

“My comrade in arms!” L’Arachel exclaimed. “Canst thou summon up the very rocks?”

“Sure,” nodded Dozla, “rocks… are my friends.” A truly caring disposition emanated off Dozla as he spoke.

Eirika smiled and she continued to cross the new bridge. She kept her arms spread out for balance as she trod lightly across the wet surfaces of the rocks. The Bog continued to belch and gurgle. And on the other side of it, Rennac greeted Eirika, a mad smile on his face hidden by his hand as he tried to protect himself from the putrid odours about.

Eirika stood by Rennac and she thought briefly of the property of his that she possessed but when she turned her head, to check on Dozla, he had begun to cross the bridge as well. His pace was eager, perhaps foolishly so and it caused much anxiety to stir in Eirika.

“Oh, Dozla, please be careful!” she begged.

Every thudding and clunking footstep that he took was punctuated by the Bog’s displeasure. It ripped asunder with yet more gurgling noises as Dozla used each rock as a foothold. 

“Good sir, do wait for me, darling!” L’Arachel sang out.

She peered out over the arch of what remained of the original bridge’s facade only to yank herself back. She swivelled around, her tail twitched excitedly as she took a huge breath.

“Oh, Ambrosius, sweetie, come out, come out wherever you are.” L’Arachel playfully intoned.

Eirika and Rennac exchanged a concerned look between each other. Dozla seemed as unfazed and happy as ever. All of them watched as L’Arachel summoned a steed of unusual colour. Shyly her steed’s head emerged from around the corner only to disappear. A whirl of auburny coloured fur.

“It’s alright, Ambrosius.” L’Arachel attempted to coax the creature. “You can come out now. Come on.”

The creature whined but obeyed its mistress. Slowly, with stumbling steps, the creature emerged from behind a copse of lumpy, black trees. It was equine as something which was most assuredly not equine could be. Four legs. A tail. A long face with a nose. Two ears. All very horse-like until it wasn’t as all watched the creature emerge from hiding. But it was Eirika who had the darndest feeling upon seeing L’Arachel’s noble steed.

That was, no, surely not but it was. That was her puppy dog. That was her Seth. . Well, her and Ephraim’s Seth. But the resemblance was uncanny. The same, shaggy long haired species of dog in the peculiar russet colour with matching ruddy eyes. The only difference was that her Seth was a lot more outgoing than L’Arachels steed, Ambrosius but it was throwing Eirika for a loop regardless to see not quite double like that.

“Attaboy, Ambrosius.” L’Arachel praised the dog as he bounded up to her. “My loyal steed. Now still…. Yes, good be still.”

L’Arachel hopped into the saddle that was prepared around Ambrosius’ midsection. The saddle itself was of a rich, premium lather that was chocolate brown. Bedecking it was various bits and pieces of bedding and bunting, all vibrant and eclectic, dyed a royal purple with yellow stitching for an insignia or shield. 

Ambrosius barked a couple times. The sound echoed through the fen and L’Arachel handled his reins. She lifted her nose to the air and seemed most delighted as she clenched in her legs; her heels ragged against Ambrosius’ ribcage.

“Forward march, my noble steed!” L’Arachel announced. “Tally ho, Ambrosius!”

Ambrosius’ head bobbed up and down as L’Arachel urged him further. He padded along cautiously, sniffing the stones before intrepidly putting so much as a single paw on them. L’Arachel gave him another urging jolt to the midsection with her heels and Ambrosius continued forward. But with L’Arachel’s pointed encouragement digging in, he galloped across the bridge and made it to the safety of the other side. He reared back, padding around, before Eirika and company.

“Let’s get out of here.” Eirika said, sleeve across her face as the Bog of Eternal Stench grizzled petulantly and flatulently.

Her friends couldn’t agree more. They didn’t have to. All they had to do was follow in her steps through the belching mire. Eirika charged along at the front; Dozla followed suit; and L’Arachel was quick to catch up with them both despite having crossed the bridge last. She over took Rennac in their haphazard but still otherwise single file line on the Bog’s shoreline.

“Excuse me, thank you.” L’Arachel chirped to Rennac who was head down and shoulders up as he walked.

Both her and her steed’s tail wagged as they passed by him. He had barely noticed as he was a bit too absorbed in his thoughts. He clutched onto the peach that the Goblin King had given him. A dark expression crossed his forehead as he came to the realisation. Getting rid of it was all too easy. Squeezing it too tight or less arduously, Rennac glanced around, he could simply sink it in the swamp.

As the others went on ahead, Rennac dug his heels in. He paused to lean out over the bubbling edge of the shoreline of the Bog. He hoped that no one would notice as he tempted fate. But alas. Someone did notice. Someone that Rennac absolutely did not want to notice as he stood, arm outstretched and ready to drop the wretched peach into the Bog.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” purred the Goblin King.

Rennac looked around. Eirika and the other's hadn’t even noticed him and yet he had. From someone unknown vantage point - likely inside Rennac’s own head, actually - the Goblin King had detected a note of treachery from the Dwarf. Rennac’s expression contorted pitifully as he begged with the thin air.

“Oh, please, I can’t give it to her.” Rennac pled. 

Silence followed and Rennac was left alone by the Goblin King. And yet he felt menaced and haunted by the vile monarch’s invisible presence regardless. Rennac kept holding onto that peach. He drew it back in closer to him, becoming finitely aware of how its fuzz felt on his fingertips and he sighed. Rennac rejoined the party as they ventured further into the Bog of Eternal Stench.

Away from its edge, where the Labyrinth walls did loom, the Bog of Eternal Stench was a surprisingly verdant place. Lush greenery grew from nutrient rich soil that was dark in colour. The trees, though knotted and twisted, were tall with an overhanging curtain of foliage. Streaks of musky sunlight came through the gaps in hallowed shafts.

L’Arachel led the parade, swinging her staff around, “We should reach the Castle before day.” she confidently announced.

Dozla murmured, jolly, as he followed along behind L’Arachel. Though he was huge and generally sluggish, Dozla did well to keep pace with someone as nimble as L’Arachel, doubly so as she was mounted upon a very agile dog. Eirika followed at a couple paces behind, blessed with human legs rather than canine energy or general gigantism. And behind her, at several paces, wading through the leaf litter and grass was Rennac.

And at even more paces away from them, the Goblin King Valter watched them on their march. Accompanied in spirit - and a menacing one at that over Rennac. Whilst the Goblin King, mostly through his crystal ball but he had other ways of knowing what was happening but for Ephraim’s benefit, a toddler cradled in the Goblin King’s arms, he spied on them through the surface of the crystal ball. 

“Is this what you’re trying to find, hm, my peach?” the Goblin King mused - breathed - aloud. 

He kept a periphery gaze, vulture-like, on Ephraim who sucked his thumb and gurgled as babies did when held. But even so, as he chewed on his lips and his thumb, Ephraim was entranced by the distorted figures that he saw inside the crystal ball. Blissfully ignorant that it was the face of his younger - now older - twin sister that the gaze of both the crystal ball and the Goblin King was most entranced by.

“All this trite effort and for what? This troublesome creature, it's hardly worth it.” the Goblin King whispered to Ephraim.

As though he knew he were being insulted, Ephraim began to cry. His pudgy cheeks quickly turned pink as he cried.

The Goblin King, disliking the discordant cries of a babe, attempted to rock Ephraim back to calm.

“It gets worse, you know.” the Goblin King informed him, his voice was soft as he rocked Ephraim. “Soon, oh soon, she will forget all about you, my minnow. Just as soon as Rennac gives her my present for her. And then she will forget everything…. Everything.”

Ephraim hiccupped, having ceased his wailing. The Goblin King smirked, pleased he could finally hear himself think again. Not that he was thinking beyond much but counting the precious seconds between now and when that peach was finally gifted unto his beloved. And it had to be soon because all of them were beginning to mumble with the signs of hunger.

As L’Arachel trotted forth, she was vexed as to whether or not it was her own stomach rumbling or if it was her steed’s. For the sake of her polite, beauteous image, she was hoping that it was Ambrosius who was being so discourteous but deep within, she knew herself to be lying. But it was Dozla who very simply and very bluntly stated what they were all thinking regarding their empty bellies.

“I’m hungry.” he bellowed.

“I know, but we can’t stop now…” Eirika replied, perhaps a touch harsher than she meant. 

She was hungry too but she also had other things to worry about and consider. But her eyes widened. They might have been in the middle of stinking nowhere - quite literally - but they were surrounded with nature regardless so surely, she thought. 

“Maybe we can find some berries.” Eirika suggested, salivating at the thought.

She wandered off the path that L’Arachel had gone ahead and blazed for them. Eirika scanned the scrub for anything edible. Her eyes darted through the grass and ferns, skipping along the bubbling surface of the Bog. But she saw nothing of interest as she held her breath against the stench. 

Rennac simpered closer to her and offered her something in his hand, “Uh, here…” he murmured. He felt awful for her.

“Rennac…” Eirika breathed and she emanated gratefulness. “Oh thank you, thank you.”

She beamed hungrily as she accepted the gift from Rennac. She was careful not to pluck it from his hands lest she came across as greedy but the measurement required was more strenuous than she expected. Her eyes were all lit up as she examined the fruit. It was so soft in her hand. It smelt divinely sweet, as well. Her mouth was watering.

“You’re a lifesaver.” Eirika praised Rennac.

Eirika closed her eyes as she sank her teeth into the fruit’s flesh. Rennac had to avert his own gaze with guilt. Eirika, however, revelled in how the juices seeped into her mouth. Breaking the skin and flesh, the crunch was extremely satisfying, Eirika thought as she swallowed the piece that she had incised with her front teeth. 

But it was all too horrifying for Rennac… And yet, he returned his gaze, whimpering like a kicked dog, when Eirika was not immediately struck down some unknown ailment or worse. Just with placid death. Eirika opened her eyes and her brow furrowed. 

“This tastes strange…” she murmured.

Eirika stared at the fruit. Something was amiss with it as the taste of it coiled on her tongue. The bite mark on it felt wrong even though nothing felt awry with her teeth or mouth. The yellow flesh of the fruit seemed fresh. And it had a dulcet taste but something about it was airy and peculiar. Unlike any peach that Eirika had ever eaten in festive, summer days gone past, the fruit that was cut lovingly by her mother for her and her brother. Her stomach swirled as her eyes became unfocused.

Rennac groaned nervously. He took a step back. He was wavering. Terrified. 

Even in the midst of the smearing blur of her vision, Eirika noticed how her Dwarven companion behaved for her. Her heart wrenched weakly. 

“Rennac… what have you done?” she asked, her expression crestfallen and pitiful.

“O-Oh, damn you, Valter…” Rennac muttered. He turned his back on Eirika. “And damn me too!” 

He panicked and he fled. Eirika could merely watch. She tried to pursue him but in a strange blindness, Rennac went one way and Eirika went another. She dragged her feet through the mire, kicking up leaf litter as she felt a peculiar sort of calm come over her. She groped at a tree, to help keep her standing upright as her legs bowed with a gelatinous feeling. 

She smiled. She felt a wisp of a giggle on her peach soaked lips. “Everything’s dancing…” she commented, almost joyous, to herself. She still held onto that marvellous poison peach.

Crystals spun to bubbles in the Goblin King’s hand. Eirika could see it. See him. So far away and over the tumultuous lines of the Labyrinth that confined his Castle. He was perched so prettily on the windowsill, forever toying with his crystal balls that he was releasing unto the world. For her. And she could see these crystalline bubbles carry themselves like foamy, soapy pixies on a gentle breeze. Blown kissed all for her. Whimsical and yet a gift from a most severe and stern face. Eirika tried to focus on them. One… Two… Three… Four… 

Was four a lucky number? She couldn’t remember. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the clinking of windchimes as her eyes enamoured themselves on the opaqueness of the bubbles and the barest edge of iridescence that they carried.

Eirika felt dizzy as she slipped to her knees. She laid in pain, cramps in her stomach region, as she watched those bubbles finally come for her. Everything around her glimmered and glittered. As though it were kissed by dew or was sprinkled with gemstone dust. She couldn’t move but she kept herself propped up. The yellow peach at her side. Dozla and L’Arachel and Rennac anywhere but. She was alone in the mists of the Bog. Watching the bubbles dance and swirl on a barely there zephyr. 

It was mesmerising. She could hardly keep her eyes open as she was hypnotised by the way they floated. Inside their lackadaisical vortexes, she saw the strangest thing. The little ballroom dancer from her music box was now dancing - twirling endlessly - inside of it. Over and over to tinny, tinkling music that she couldn’t really get the rhythm to.

The other bubbles were soon filled with similarly plasticky dancers. All laden with tule. Dancing a basic waltz eternally. But Eirika remained enchanted with that very first bubble with her little music box dancer in it. Even as the others became masquerade guests in love, her attention was enraptured by that music box dancer who, as she drew closer and closer in her lonesome, primadonna status, Eirika could swear looked just like her.

Her if she was glitzy and glamorous… She felt a pang of jealousy and a pang of idealisation. No… That was her… She was the music box dancer or maybe not? The girl in the bubble had stopped dancing either way. She looked only lost and confused, unable to dance in her fugue state. Eirika yawned. She remained where she was. Languishing.

Her companions had not yet realised she was so, so tired. Tired and missing.

And through a keyhole in the glade’s trees, Dozla and L’Arachel spied the most heartening thing. They saw the inner sanctum of the Labyrinth and where the Castle rose from the terraced hills that it was protected by. The walls seemed lower here than elsewhere. All that came between them was another layer or two of forest and a barren, grey valley. It might have been nightfall but they were so, so close. They could make it and the shining of the silver stars would permit it, they were certain.

“Verily!” L’Arachel cried. She was beaming with her fuzzy maw. 

Dozla looked out into the distance beside her, shoulders lifted to imply his own joy in the breaching of the distance, too.

“The Castle doth lie yonder, my lady!” she announced and she thrust forth her staff as a fanciful flourish.

But then they both realised. Turning their heads back and forth, between the Castle and the Bog, they realised that Eirika - and Rennac - no longer accompanied them. 

“My lady?” L’Arachel asked, quieter as she was stricken with panic.

Dozla lowed similarly concerned; same for Ambrosius. L’Arachel called out Eirika’s name - and title - out a few more times but before serious concern could settle over them like a black cloud, a curious little bubble floated towards them both. Haloed in orange lights, it caught their eye and what a little marvel that it was. As it floated closer to them, they could see inside of it. A picturesque ballroom. Dozens upon dozens of guests in elegant attire. It was all so strange and distorted.Like rippling water gleaming with soap suds.

It was like walking in a dream, Eirika mused to herself. Her eyes wide with wonder as she wandered through the crowds. She was starstruck as she watched the dancers and as she listened to the music. Violins and violas sang when their strings were pulled back, fingered with intensity, cellos and harps were plucked at with harmonic concordia. 

The ballroom was enchanting. It couldn’t be understated. It was ornate and elaborate. Overdressed. Claustrophobic. Lit candelabras and chandeliers kept the ballroom blindingly bright yet there were not a flicker, not a shadow cast against the walls because of such intense illumination. It was all crystalline and pristine, white tallow. Beautifully, so. White beads hung in sloped loops like bunting; a misty veil was brought down upon the ceiling. Everything was either ivory or gold or dusty rose. The floor was polished white marble. Spires choked the dance floor. And the haunting face of a zodiacal clock watched every dance and mingle.

The guests were exuberant. But forcibly so. Their enthusiasm for how they danced was manic and unbelievable. They laughed, high and shrill and saccharine. None of them had faces. Not in human proportion, anyway. All of them wore masks. Geese, ducks, doves, and deer. Eirika counted not one human amongst them as they danced this way and that way. Ribbons and tulle as they streaked by. Every movement of theirs was jolly and jagged. 

Within all this cacophony and chaos, Eirika was truly the belle of the ball, befitting of being the Goblin King’s betrothed.

She looked and felt unusually decadent, like an aquamarine stone. Her hair was done up huge and over her head, like a bouffant, hair-sprayed into place. Her tresses were curled and made fluffy, wreathed with silver decorations with motifs of heather and ivy. Long, silver earrings dangled from the stud in her lobes; despite how the trails graced her shoulders, Eirika had hardly noticed them. A messy, sparkling necklace had a place of honour at the base of her swan neck and gave an inch of skin to the top of her dress’s bodice. And the dress she was wearing was of pearlescent gold, off the shoulders with massive sleeves overhanging, just off the blades of her shoulders. It was long and the tresses caused her to step light inside her glass slippers she could barely hear the click of as she walked airily through the crowd.

Yet despite being the belle of this ball, no one stopped to stare save one. Eirika was attracted to him. He hid his face in a draconian mask that was not strapped to his face but rather held up with a wand. It was kind of scary looking, skeletal and demonic with long, curling horns and a furious, gnarled face but he was dressed so elegantly in black. Sparkling and sequined, he wore a flounced collar and a v-line shape. His hair was fluffy and cobalt. He stared. 

All around them, as the music played softly and as the masquerade folks laughed, were merry, the world could have been ending and Eirika wouldn’t have known and they would have been celebrating as they were. She kept coming forward. She was entranced, in a lullaby of likes.

Her gentleman suitor removed his mask. The Goblin King, her Valter. There was such a sad love in his eyes, as smeared with glitter and silver as they were. Eirika was entranced by his melancholic, metallic gaze. 

The pair of lovers stood still amid the music and dancers. Simply watching. Waiting. Equally enchanted with one another. Until he was gone. Eirika was quietly dismayed. All it took was a blink of an eye and her Goblin King vanished but his betrothed, a jewel, was not so easily stood up. Not in the ball of a millennia. A lifetime, at least.

Eirika looked around. She couldn’t see Valter but he could see her. He danced with another woman as Eirika ascended a set of stairs embedded in the marble. Her dress was tugged on by two people so she cast a cold but curious glare towards them. One of them held a chest to her and opened its casket-like lid to her. A snake popped out at her. Eirika flinched and these people laughed but she could barely hear them yet their mouths were ripped open like maws at her. She glared at the snake. It was a toy of stuffing and fabric. It was ugly and unconvincing in hindsight so Eirika was embarrassed to have been afraid of it. She hurried off and Valter watched, unamused but he kept dancing with that other woman.

Valter abandoned his dance partner and she abandoned him. Eirika sashayed through the ballroom and Valter was still amid the crowd. Eirika was constantly moving. He was thrilled as she walked straight past him. Her eyes fixed for him and him alone and yet she was blind. 

The crowds danced wildly at a tempo which was not befitting the music. Eirika came to a standstill as she was dizzied by how they twirled and swirled around her. Ribbons flew everywhere; the perfume was a maddening haze over the room. And now Valter came forth for Eirika as she ceased her search for him.

Eirika stood upon one tile of the marble flooring. People around her spilled over to many, still dancing their manic dancing. She glanced around, tip-toeing, spiralling like a music box dancer forever turning inside of the plasticine pergola that she belonged to. Around her, the crowd did not part for her like the seas parted for Moses and yet, when Eirika completed her revolution, she finally saw him through the gauzy tulle and bonafide silks and everything else the masquerade ball goers wore.

Their gazes met. Connected. And Eirika’s breath was stolen away by his beautifully gruesome visage. A cruel smile corner to corner upon his thin face. And Valter slowly came towards her. Eirika lifted a hand and he slotted against her body, in the waltz position, with sublime naturalness. And thus began their valentine evening spun on the most fragile of glass.

Valter swept Eirika off her feet. He danced with her, straight backed, and gazes unyielding. They were the only ones dancing to the tempo. Gracefully slow as Eirika’s dress flounced about and her hand was held delicately in Valter’s claws. Eirika had to resist the urge to snuggle in, like a tempestuous daydream, it felt. They danced throughout the entirety of the ballroom. All of it was sparkling, shimmering. Eirika’s heart pounded, seduced, as she waltzed with Valter. The same looping steps that never disjointed their gaze. It was all so easy. Even if it was terse, too. So much to talk about and yet, they were both silent. An enigmatic conversation in their irises but it was indecipherable to them both beyond a mutual intensity sparked of attraction. 

They became the centre of attention. Dancers stopped to stare at them. They gawked openly, watching intrigued as how the Goblin King waltzed with his betrothed. Eirika winced but attempted to pay them no mind. She focused only on Valter and how the music followed them around the room on their light stepping. But she was rattled regardless by all the staring.

Valter tilted his chin up. He expected more of her. Poise and composure. But a discordant chime rung and Eirika broke the gaze. For the first time in a long, long time, she broke away from Valter’s black-blue marble gaze and she threw her attention to the clock.

It was gilded in gold. Ornate and beheld the motifs of the zodiac. And it struck at twelve but twelve was not the crux of its face like on a normal clock. Rather, it went through to thirteen and the number thirteen was given the regality of the midday and midnight position. In a dash of good luck, the hour hand was an hour short. But that meant, Eirika had a most dire realisation as Valter held her hand and kept his other on her waist.

Eirika reefed herself away from Valter. But Valter wouldn’t let her. He held onto her tightly until she squeaked with pain. Eirika struggled, she stomped on Valter’s foot and he let her go. He grimaced with a spiky glare at her but Eirika harrumphed, stern in her childishness. She hiked up the skirt of her dress - it was so heavy - and she ran away, all but losing her glass slippers in her hurry. 

As she ran, her hair and her dress flounced about. People tried to grab at her. Convince her to stay with their howling laughter and their cockamine smiles but scared Eirika all the more. She had to get away. She had to hurry. She only had an hour and she came to the very edge of this bubbled world of glitz and glamour. 

It was like a mirror at the edge of the ballroom. The surface curved in on itself at the top and bottom, greatly distorting the images that it reflected. Eirika became a blur of pale gold on its surface. But at this edge, she hesitated. No way out, or at least that’s what it seemed. What she was taking for granted. She looked around, desperate, flailing, if there was no apparent way out, she would simply have to make it, she couldn’t just rely on the whims of the world to have everything fall into place perfectly.

At the edge of the party and the edge of this dulcet little world of glitter and glass, a couple were seated, having hordevours of the strangest things. At their table was a spare chair and Eirika took it. She grabbed it by its handles - it was so much lighter than what she was expecting - and she faced the mirror once more.

Bells chimed loudly. Eirika felt her blood throb in her veins as she did it. She smashed the chair against the mirror and the bubble popped. Clattered and shattered. Broke into a million imperfect pieces. The chair was sent flying and the ballroom was wracked with tremors. People screamed and screeched and Eirika steadied herself through the quaking. The ballroom turned to dust and shards.

Eirika tumbled forward. No longer bedecked in the gorgeous splendour of a golden wedding dress. She floated, suspended, in a pitch blackness. All around her the remains of the ballroom were scattered. The beads and the curtains. Remnants of the candelabras and chandeliers. Masks and musical instruments. They all tumbled out with Eirika. For a moment, it was strangely stunning. Like shooting stars. Everything around Eirika clattered downwards. Raining down on an apt junkyard.

Eirika, too. She landed in the junkyard as well. She bounced on a tightly strung tent that cushioned her fall but she didn’t feel afraid. She wondered briefly where the Goblin King was. All those people, too. They had all just disappeared in a blink of an eye because of her. Her heart wrestled and she hoped her friends were safe. Dozla, L’Arachel, and of course Rennac too.

Pretty, shiny, ugly things glimmered around Rennac as he made refuge in the junkyard too. All around him was scrap metal and assorted, random discarded objects like wheels and microwaves. Cobwebs clung to the surfaces of whatever the spiders could skate upon. Rennac sat on his bottom, half-heartedly kicking dirt into an already simpering fire that he had lit for little comfort. In the dark, he commiserated.

She could never forgive him, surely, he thought to himself in guilty despair. He held his head in his hands as he came to the grim realisation that he had lost his only friend. The only one he had ever had and losing her was exactly what he had done. 

Eirika laid atop the miscellany of the junkyard, arms spread out like the wings of an angel. She opened her eyes groggily and saw countless silver stars in the night sky. She shifted her head slightly and moved her fingers. Everything felt so faint and airy. Memories blackened in the din of her mind as she moved aimlessly. Oh, she thought to herself, she discovered that she was holding something. She lifted herself slightly, pots and pans rattled beneath her as she elbowed a broken basket out of the way, too.

She gazed into the bitemarks of the peach that she held. She couldn’t remember where it had come from - or why she would be holding it, asleep and uncomfortable. It was disgustingly soft and she could see the pit poke through the ruined yellow of it. A worm burrowed out of it, fat and wriggling, and Eirika’s skin crawled.

“Yuck!” she yelled.

Eirika threw the peach away. Lobbed it as far as she could in her revolt. She didn’t even hear if it hit anything but that was good enough for her. She pulled herself up and tried to get to her feet. She was all but scrambling as her hands went here, there, and everywhere trying to get a hold whilst her feet went in the other direction. She managed to find ground but as she tried to find something to hold onto as leverage so she could pull herself up, everything started to move. A clunking noise like a ball hitting a drum and then a voice.

Someone shouted at Eirika, “Oh, please, get off my back!” 

Eirika flinched and a mountain of junk beside her began to move and like a turtle, a grubby little girl emerged, carrying it all upon her back. She looked up at Eirika, imploringly, and beneath the grime, there would have once been a cute little girl underneath it all but time had taken a toll on her. Her pigtails were done up with twine; the colour of her hair was a dulled indigo. There were patches of scales on her face, a mouldy yellow, which made Eirika worry the girl was ill. 

“You should be more careful next time,” the girl warned, “you should look where your going, it's very important.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” Eirika murmured but she shook her head. She took a step back. “I was looking.”

The girl blinked. She had eyes the colour of dried blood. “Pardon? Where were you going?”

“I don’t remember.” Eirika murmured. 

The pair began to walk together. Eirika wandered quietly. Searching for a hint in the din of the junkyard. The girl followed, rattling. Jingling and jangling. She had all sorts of things attached to her backpack. Built up and up and over her. Chairs, rods, books. Goodness knows what else.

“Oh.” the girl murmured, sounding a touch disappointed. “If you don’t know where you are going, how are you to get there? It sounds terribly lonely.”

“I was searching for something.” Eirika murmured. 

She wandered ahead. The girl remained behind. Eirika looked around. There was a hint of orange in the sky still. The things - the abundance of things - all around her seemed so grey and dull. Shapeless in the clutter that was utterly lost on her eyes.

“Well, how about looking here…?” the girl asked expectantly. 

Eirika turned around and she drew in closer, like a moth to a flame. The girl held something precious to Eirika. The only vibrant object around - and in good condition too. Holding it, Eirika’s heart lurched tightly.

“Orson?” she murmured.

The teddy bear was a cocoa brown in colour with yellowy eyes and was swathed with a light green scarf. He was perhaps a little flat, a little soulless but he was Eirika’s. She cradled him in her arms and her lost gaze flicked back to the little girl.

“Thank you.” Eirika told her, breathless in her gratitude. 

The girl smiled, eager to be praised, she nodded. “That’s what you were looking, for wasn’t it, older sister?”

“Yes… I forgot.” Eirika agreed.

She kept Orson close to her chin, holding him. Hugging him. She couldn’t believe that she had forgotten him. Oh, and Orson, Orson was married to Monica, another of her precious teddy bears. They couldn’t be separated. Where was Monica now, Eirika wondered.

“Then you best come with me, over here,” the girl piped up, “there could be more which you have forgotten and who knows? Together we might find them so you can never be parted.”

Eirika nodded. She was enraptured by the idea. Such ideas were already on her own tongue so she came when the little girl beckoned her. The little girl lifted a veil of trinkets for Eirika to come beneath. Eirika poked her head in, carpet and rugs and more cascading either side of her as she peered inside. Her eyes widened with peculiarity.

It was her bedroom.

Exactly the way she left it. Exactly the way she remembered it.

The reading nook beneath her gabled windows. The side table next to it, white with dappled drawers and a photo of her and her family; the faces cast in a glare from a street light, however. Her bed immaculately made with the fluffy, dinosaur-shaped body pillow draped across all the rest of her pillows. The quilt made from different patches, made with love by her grandmother. The shelved home of all her teddy bears with a gap for Orson and Monica waited beside said gap. The posters on the wall for all her favourite teen angst fantasy movies. All of it so artfully cluttered with so many treasured possessions; soft toy galore. 

Eirika sighed contentedly as she came indoors. She spun on her heel and it was perfect. It even smelt like home. Her favourite laundry powder - like frangipanis and fresh linen - and dinner baking in the oven downstairs. She grinned before flopping down on her bed, face down.

She buried herself in her pillows. She hugged the dinosaur shaped one and she hugged Orson as well. She smiled and then she lifted her head. It wasn’t a dream. It was real and so precious to her. But, perhaps, the outside world was. Eirika stared, a little bit afraid, as she scanned her surroundings for horrible Goblins and worse. It was just a dream, she told herself to placate her pounding heart. It was so eerily silent. She looked down at her teddy bear.

“I dreamed it all, Orson.” she confessed. She hugged him; his beaded face poking on her chest. “But it felt so real.” Eirika pulled herself off her bed. “Let’s go see if Daddy’s back…”

Eirika kept Orson close to her as she returned, with a skip in her step, to her bedroom. She opened it up, expecting to see the hallways with its immaculate wooden floorboards but she was greeted with the grey din of the junkyard instead. The little girl and all her things right in front of her.

“It’s much better - much safer - to stay inside and hide, older sister, please believe me.” she begged all but screaming. She came inside and she shook her head; all her wonderful awful things shaking with her. “There is nothing you want out there, you must understand.”

Eirika closed the door behind the little girl. She clutched onto Orson terribly and grimaced. 

“Now what do we have here, let’s have a looksie.” the little girl chirruped. “Oh, your little bunny rabbit. You like your little bunny rabbit, don’t you?”

The little girl picked it up. It was fluffy and pink with lanky limbs. She stroked down the fur of its ears. She looked up at Eirika expectantly. Eirika nodded her head and she accepted the toy off her.

“Yes, yes, I thought so.” the girl chirped. 

“Ooh, and here’s Betsy Boo. You remember Betsy Boo, don’t you?” the girl asked with huge, pleading eyes as she picked up a doll with red yarn for hair. 

Eirika accepted the doll into her embrace. The girl was pleased.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she chirped, “now then, what else do we have?”

The little girl scuttled about, turning around and Eirika watched as all her possessions moved with her. Jingling. She shuffled past to Eirika’s vanity and examined Eirika’s things that sat cluttered upon it. Eirika sat down at her desk and she listened to the little girl ramble madly.

The little girl picked things up at random and forced them on Eirika, “Look at the pencil tins and all the pencils, so many pencils, think of all the drawings you haven’t gotten around to yet and your little panda slippers. You don’t want to throw away those, look at them, you can still get so much use out of them, don’t be wasteful.”

Eirika held onto Orson, the pink bunny rabbit, and Betsy Boo but also the panda slippers and her pencil box and something else the little girl had picked up to force onto her as well. But she clutched onto them anyway. So many precious memories of mundanity, she supposed. It would be heartbreaking to discard them or forget about them, she thought. 

The little girl kept scuttling around. She picked up a hobby horse and a board game. She placed them around Eirika until she was all but barricaded in by her possessions and then found a true treasure in all the trove. She offered it to Eirika who held it like it was poison. She looked down the tube of the ruby red lipstick.

“Look at how fortunate you are,” the girl cooed, “now go ahead, put it on, make yourself up.”

Eirika nodded. She smeared the lipstick on her lips but even looking in the mirror didn’t help. It looked like a childish scrawl on her lips.

“And here’s Flopsy, you can’t part with Flopsy, and oh, we shall not forget Charlie Bear either, he’s important too.” the little girl cooed and rambled. She reveled in all of Eirika’s things.

But Eirika just stared. Half-formed thoughts on her brow as she looked down on herself. She was trapped by all the hoard that the little girl had begun to pile up on her.

“There was something I was looking for…?” Eirika murmured. 

She looked down in front of her and on her vanity was a book with a red cover entitled  _ The Labyrinth _ . She reached for it with guilty eagerness, thumbing through the pages.

“And everything you were looking for is right here, don’t you see? Everything you have ever cared about is right here and what more could you need?” the little girl urged her. She placed bright pink, plastic shelves on Eirika’s back. “See, here is your little toy bakery and here's all your little treats to go with it. How could you possibly part with such delightful little treasures? You need them.”

Eirika ignored the little girl and her brow furrowed. “Through dangers untold…”

The little girl’s shoulders began to droop as she listened to Eirika recite a passage from the book she was reading from.

“And hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way through to the Castle beyond the Goblin City to take back my brother that you hath stolen.” Eirika slowly looked up from her book as she had the most divine revelation.

“Oh, uh, is something the bother, older sister? Did you say something?” the little girl asked in a worried voice. She came a little closer and that worry in her voice darkened. “Don’t you… like your toys?” There was a cautious offendedness to how she asked her most dire question.

“It’s all junk.” Eirika whispered, coming alive to the epiphany that jolted through her veins. Her eyes shone.

The little girl gasped. “Whatever could you mean? None of this is junk.”

Eirika cast her a pitiful look. It was, she silently thought and it was all over her face. Scrawled lipstick and all. The little girl was incensed.

“What about this?” she asked and she took the music box with the eternally waltzing girl with a froufrou dress. “This is most certainly not junk.” she cried out.

Eirika paused to examine it. The ballroom dancer with her pretty, porcelain face smiled melancholically up at her from her stand in the pergola. She had received this object for her very first birthday from her parents and the lullaby that it played had soothed her for many, many nights and many, many years but…

“Yes, it is.” Eirika snapped, tears in her eyes. “It’s junk!”

Eirika threw the ballroom dancer at the mirror. The photos attached to it rippled and the glass broke in one spot, down in the bottom left, but the consequences were so much more grand that just that. From the ceiling down, her bedroom turned grey. And from that grey it became dirt, dust, and debris. As it fell to pieces around her, Eirika realised what she was searching for. What she had been so close to sugar-coating.

“I have to save Ephraim!” she declared, bolting to her feet.

She discarded all the bits and bobs the little girl had bedecked her with. She threw them down without a second thought. She pushed against the vanity and it wobbled before the glass in it shattered. She had to get out of here. She looked around desperately as the walls crumbled.

Right in front of her, the wood turned to splinters and she saw a gaping hole. Junk from the outside world started to pour through but she heard the bark of a dog.

“My lady!” L’Arachel called out to her.

“Eirika!” Dozla called out to as well.

Eirika smiled like a fool as she clambered up through the hole. She dug her hands through the debris and pulled herself through it. She followed the energised and comforting voices of her dear friends who were on her quest alongside her.

At the top of the hole, peering in, Eirika was spoilt for choice of whose hand to grasp. L’Arachel and Dozla were both there, piled on top of each other, trying to grab her as she climbed her way out of the pit she was all but buried in. She crawled out and breathed in the smell of dirt and dust but it was the fresh smell of dirt and dust. 

L’Arachel was beyond relieved to see her, even if she was a bit scuffed up, “Fair maiden, thank goodness thou art safe at last.” she gushed.

“Where are we?” Eirika asked, trying to gain steady ground amid all the every shifting and sliding junk.

“I’m glad you're back, Eirika.” growled Dozla with a smile.

“My lady, look, we’re almost there.” L’Arachel pointed out. She gestured behind her. “See? Those are the gates to the Goblin City.”

Eirika looked up and in the nearest yard, she saw a great mechanical-looking archway, nutted and bolted, embedded into a tall wall with even taller buildings behind it. It was just surrounded by the ruined black junkyard but there was still a path to it, as hidden and gnarled as it was. She couldn’t believe it. This was the very arena she had glimpsed time and time again running through the Labyrinth, trying to make heads and tails of it. Her heart fluttered with elation. There was still time.

“Dozla… Lady L’Arachel, thank you for finding me… Let’s go we, quickly, don’t have much time.” Eirika said.

L’Arachel brandished her staff. “Rightly so! Onward march now, Ambrosius, my dear!” she agreed.

Ambrosius bucked forward and L’Arachel laughed as she rode him through. Dozla howled to the moon and back and kept pace. Eirika smiled, confident that together they could storm the Goblin City’s stronghold and she would rescue her twin brother.

Their raucous talking and behaviour drew the attention of Rennac. He peeped out over the edges of various doodads and the like. His eyes went wide as he watched them slug it out through the junkyard, aiming right for the gateway. He couldn’t believe it. Eirika had resisted the poison peach and the sweet temptations of that celestial ballroom; she had overcome the greed and materialism of the junkyard; and now she could continue on her quest all but unfettered. 

“Oh no…” Rennac muttered. He took a deep breath and disappeared.

Eirika and company continued forward. Until they were at the very door that would let them into the Goblin City. A rare part of the junkyard where the dirt - an ochre red in colour - could be seen. It tightly closed off and guarded too not that the guard was doing all that well in his polished armour. In his hand, he clutched onto a tall axe of tarnished silver but his head tipped forward with slumber. L’Arachel confidently paid no heed to this, marching up to him - and the door - with various demands.

“Open up, open the door, and fetch me something to drink, I’m parched.” she said to announce her arrival.

Eirika tumbled along behind her, reaching out and touching her shoulder, “Shh,” she hushed her friend, she whispered, “Lady L’Arachel, we must go quietly.” 

L’Arachel growled. She disagreed vehemently and vehemently did not care for Eirika’s recommendation. She thwacked her staff against the door; the crystal orb atop it rapped violently on the metal of it. Both L’Arachel and Ambrosius yipped and barked at the door which remained utterly unfazed by how they hounded it.

“Lady L’Arachel,” Eirika hissed, rather irate, “if you are not careful, you will wake the guard.”

L’Arachel continued to care not for Eirika’s suggestion. She kept tapping on the door to no avail. Except of course to create racket and cacophony. She paused only to be mad at herself - no, to be mad at all the others and then some - that her strategy wasn’t working. And yet the guard who stood beside her, tall but drooping, continued to snooze and snort.

“Well,” L’Arachel began testily, “I say let them all wake up.”

To punctuate her opinion, she then beat the guard with her staff as well. She gave him a good, sound thrashing that clinked and clanked horribly. 

“Shhh.” Eirika tried to hush L’Arachel but she was entirely uninterested in being hushed or shushed.

“I shall fight you to the death, a-ha!” L’Arachel declared, speaking at the top of her lungs directly into the guard’s helmet.

The guard was roused for perhaps a fleeting second. His head lifted and his eyes opened blearily. Only for his neck to hang limp again and his lips to murmur good tidings in the depths of sleep.

Eirika withheld a sigh of relief as she snatched L’Arachel. She was most offended that milady would grab at her so uncouth and yet she did. Reefing her back away from the guard and the door. L’Arachel yapped at her like a dog with the highest art form of regal insults.

Eirika just frowned and hissed in L’Arachel’s fuzzy, little ermine ears, “Please, Lady L’Arachel, for my sake, shush.”

“Fine, for the sake of thee I will… shush, as you say.” L’Arachel muttered bitterly. “But I’m not a coward.”

“No.” Eirika replied, happy to feed L’Arachel’s ego if it meant keeping her quiet.

“And my sense of smell is keen?” L’Arachel asked, batting her eye at Eirika - and that’s when Eirika realised her eyepatch had swapped sides again, it was all very confusing her sense of accessorization.

But at her question, Eirika did feel a ghost of hesitance as she recalled their initial meeting in the Bog of Eternal Stench however Ephraim’s life was at stake so she smiled a falsetto smile.

“Oh, definitely.” Eirika lied.

L’Arachel grinned, her teeth glinting in the lowlight. “Then I shall fight anyone, anywhere, any time!” she proclaimed with her chest puffed out. Her voice grew very loud and very shrill as she spoke animatedly, whipping her staff about.

“Yes, yes, we know, we know.” Eirika tried to placate her whilst speaking in a suitably hushed voice.

She grabbed at L’Arachel’s staff as she brandished it to a frenzy. She had narrowly avoided being hit at it by it but she pulled it - and L’Arachel - in closer.

“Hm?” L’Arachel harrumphed at having been stopped. 

“Now hush.” Eirika whispered. She bopped L’Arachel on her wet little nose for emphasis to her vast displeasure.

And whilst Eirika had been dealing with L’Arachel and trying to supervene the guard getting involved, Dozla had already skulked up to the door and managed to get it open with little more than a gentle nudge from a gentle giant such as him. Dozla bulldozed ahead and Eirika turned to beckon L’Arachel.

“Come on, quietly now.” Eirika whispered.

In turn, L’Arachel then beckoned Ambrosius with a soft voice which Eirika was incredibly thankful for. Ambrosius barked in a rumbling voice as he padded up to L’Arachel. He gave her a lick to the cheek and she smiled bemusedly before mounting atop her steed’s glorious saddle. Happily astride Ambrosius, the two passed through the threshold and the still sleeping guard.

“I don’t see why I have to be so quiet.” she complained. “It’s only a Goblin City.”

Eirika looked around, surveying the inner sanctum of the Goblin City. Something off struck a chord with her but she couldn’t identify it. Not immediately or unassisted, at least. But L’Arachel was right. It was just a Goblin City. Everything was made for the three foot tall or shorter. The paths were wide and dusty. The buildings themselves were haphazard and non-compliant. Yet, strangely, it was as empty as a ghost town within this layer of the Goblin City.

“I smell trouble…” she murmured.

L’Arachel noisily sniffed the air.

Dozla growled.

And behind them all, the doors to the City slammed shut. They all stopped to stare and Dozla’s bellows grew agitated. Dozla lifted his hand and Eirika took it. Atop Ambrosius’ back, L’Arachel strode forth a few paces with the others further into the Goblin City. But they stopped suddenly when a new set of doors swung out in front of them and it only got stranger from there.

They watched - helpless - as great iron doors swung out. Meeting in the middle with shuddering noises, they saw the form of a giant man symmetrically embedded on either side of the doors. This figure wore intricate armour and had horns upon its head. Its eyes flared to life with crimson fire and from a sharp toothed mouth a deep, rumbling voice emanated.

“Who… goes… there?” it asked.

It came out of the door and loomed imposingly over them. A giant, metal contraption of a suit of armour, it was. An imprint was left behind it as it lumbered forward, arms tight and stiff at its side but not for long. 

Ambrosius whimpered, trembling, as the rest of them stared it down. As it lumbered closer, they tried to go backwards only to have swords spring forth at them from some unknown contraption at the base of the outer layer’s wall. The chains hanging between these rigged swords rung like a hardware store. 

The armoured giant mechanically turned clockwise. It extended a slow, robotic arm out and grabbed a weapon prepared for it: a roughhewn, metal axe. Again and again, it rumbled the same question. Who… goes… there?

Dozla craned his neck and bellowed from the bottom of his belly at the armoured giant. On rolling wheels, it came forth and swivelled back around. It raised its axe, ready to chop right down the middle through them. Its axe reared back and glided through the air on the follow up. The axe split the ground as the head made impact with the dirt underfoot. A huge cloud of dust bloomed and so did chaos and confusion.

Dozla pulled Eirika out of the air whilst Ambrosius was quick to dodge. He bucked L’Arachel off him and fled. L’Arachel growled as her cowardly steed escaped. Eirika took yet more fumbling steps towards those propped up swords flanking the inner side of the Goblin City.

“Watch out!” called Eirika.

“Ambrosius, come here!” L’Arachel yelled.

The armour giant ignored them and went through the motions of its instructions. Kill the intruders. And so, it reared back its arm, reefing the axe from the ground and geared up for a second attack against them. All whilst its mechanisations rung and creaked infernally. 

It swung sideways: back and forth in grand, cutting arcs. Every time it hit the walls that it was stuck between, the axe-head made sparks. Eirika ducked in time and she still heard L’Arachel impatiently call for Ambrosius. She stamped her foot and the butt of her spear against the ground but the dog merely whimpered behind a rock in hiding.

“Will you please stop embarrassing me?” L’Arachel snapped at Ambrosius.

He whinnied pitifully and L’Arachel inched closer, still cross with him as she tried to tame him against his natural nature of cowardice. 

She narrowly avoided a hit from the humongous armoured giant. Eirika shrieked as she helped to pull Dozla away from where the axe swung. She held onto Dozla’s arm as they watched the axe-head plough through the air. Missing them. And with her head tilted up, Eirika spotted the most amazing thing up on the parapets of the Goblin city’s walls.

“Rennac!” she exclaimed.

Dozla laughed as he looked up, too.

Only for the armoured giant to take another swing at them. Eirika let go of Dozla, scattering as the axe missed them on the thinnest second. Eirika panted as she glanced around. They were caged in with this terrible titan from every angle. Every angle except for above, she realised as she watched Rennac ready himself. He stood at the very top of the iron walls where the giant had emerged from. His arms made circular motions in the air, like he was about to jump but he kept looking away, cringing, with shackles of fear weighing him down.

The armoured giant reared back. Its arms pulling the axe out of the ground and it took a moment to reboot. In those precious few seconds of recuperation, Rennac took his leap of faith. Rennac jumped.

It was only a small jump. He was a smallish Dwarf after all but he managed to jump right into the dish of the armoured giant’s right neck and shoulder. Right in the crook, he clambered around and sank his fingers in whatever gaps in its rust red plating that he could find.

Rennac shoved aside the head and it came tumbling off its hinges. Eirika jumped out of the way below as the head smashed into the ground. With its cockpit exposed, the Goblin piloting the thing was revealed. Rightfully so, having been unmasked, the Goblin screamed. His hands blindingly diving on the controls, moving them at random in panic. The armoured giant’s movements became sudden and jerky.

Rennac snarled, “You get out of here.”

He dived on the Goblin. He grabbed at the creature’s head and body, trying to force him out of where he sat in esteem within the armoured giant’s cockpit. Even as the Goblin struggled, Rennac won out. He pulled him from his chair and threw him over the edge.

The Goblin face-planted on the ground but pulled himself up in one piece. “That wasn’t very nice.” he complained, spitting.

Dozla leered over at the Goblin. His beady brown eyes widened and he scrambled away from Dozla all too quickly. The Goblin kicked up much dust as he fled.

“My turn now…” Rennac muttered with relish at the top of the armoured giant’s cockpit.

Rennac sat down and the seat was surprisingly firm. Not worn at all. It was nice. Comfortable. The same could not be said about the rest of the cockpit. The dashboard was of bronze and copper, knobs and parameters with ticky little boxes. It was all very technologically esoteric as Rennac coiled his hands around the joysticks provided, of which there were three being something of an issue as he - like many things, such as Goblins - only ever had two hands.

“Er, how do I work this thing…?” Rennac grumbled to himself as he tried different things.

Rennac was just as dangerous - if not more so - than the Goblin who had initially been at the helm of the armoured giant. Rennac grunted and groaned as he tried to control the titanic machine. It jerked about. The axe in the clutches of its mechanical fingers tightly grasped and swinging about with haphazard control.

“Watch out!” Eirika yelled. “Drop the axe!”

“I’m trying!” Rennac shouted back.

With Rennac guiding the armoured giant, L’Arachels mighty steed had all the more reason to hide and cower. L’Arachel and Dozla simply watched, almost awed, at how Rennac fumbled with the controls he was at the helm of. He kept pushing and shoving at the various joysticks and dohickeys. Nothing but the worst happened; he got zapped and some sort of recording device began to smoke. The armoured giant jerked this way and then that at random.

L’Arachel hopped out of the way and inched closer to her disobedient dog; she figured now was as good a time as any to discipline him. Her tail wagged with furor.

“Ambrosius, come here. Now, my noble steed.” she commanded of him.

Ambrosius shook his head.

And for L’Arachel’s oblivious sake, Dozla kept an eye on Rennac and the armoured giant or iron. He lowed, concerned, as Rennac kept making mistake after mistake inside its cockpit. Only to have the armoured giant rear its arms up and strike the archway doors it had emerged from with its axe. The sound of metal scraping against metal was atrocious. At the crux of where the axe had hit the archway, sparks flew. They showered Rennac - and going up, the plumes of smoke were worsening. Once fluffy and light grey, they had become dark and noxious in Rennac’s inability to use the cockpit’s dashboard.

“Get out of there!” Eirika shouted with concern saturating all of her being.

“I know, I know.” Rennac snapped. “Abandon ship!”

He let go of all the controls. Rennac hastily got to his feet and dove out the other side of the cockpit. He took a tumble on the way down, face-planting into the ground just like the goblin he had usurped in the first place to take the rein of the armoured giant. Rennac shook himself off, propping himself on all fours, as Eirika came to his aide. She fussed over him, helping to hold him.

“Oh, Rennac, are you okay?” she asked, harried. 

The smell of smoke was acrid now. The armoured giant jittered and bugged as the smoke plumed. Inside of it blue sparks burst and there was an explosion - but no debris, thankfully, or at least for now.

Rennac panted as he rolled over, sitting with one leg out and one knee up, he shook his head, “I’m not asking to be forgiven,” he began breathlessly, “I ain’t ashamed of anything I did. Valter made me give you that peach. I don’t care what you think of me.”

Eirika was rattled by the sudden confessions that Rennac unloaded unto her. Her eyes grew wet with tears that weren’t fully formed. She listened intently to what Rennac had to say for himself regardless.

“I told you I was a coward and that I wasn’t interested in being friends.” Rennac muttered in defence of himself.

Eirika leaned in, wet eyes and all, and she whispered, “I forgive you, Rennac.”

“You- You do…?” Rennac uttered in utter disbelief. 

Dozla bellowed in an exuberant voice which all found heartening; L’Arachel nodded her head in similar agreement with a smile on her black-lined lips.

“And I commend you,” she added benevolently, “rarely have I seen such courage. You are a valiant man, Sir Rennac.”

“Huh? I am?” Rennac asked, his voice and expression upturned. He sat up straighter now, both legs ajar making him look almost like a blonde teddy bear. 

Dozla reached out to him and tapped him fondly on the back. “We…” he announced slowly. “Are companions true. Me, you, her, and her, too. We. Friends.” 

“We are?” Rennac cautiously vied to confirm.

“Yeah, we are.” Eirika whispered. She was on her knees and from a side pocket on her jeans, she produced his little goody bag of trinkets. It shimmered in the lowlight, all clunky and cherished. “Here is your property back, Rennac. I’m sorry I took it from you, that was wrong of me. But thank you. Thank you for all your help, Rennac.”

Her words were resonating, at a depth that Rennac did not realise that he was endowed with. He took back his pouch but it was her words that he saw a greater treasure in than the plastic and other gems that he kept all wrapped up inside his little pouch. He stowed it away, latching it safely back on its belt loop that it belonged to. Rennac sucked in a breath, breaking the moment that lingered between them.

“Well then,” he said on the exhale, “uh, well, what are we waiting for?”

He got to his feet; Eirika tried to help him get up but she was a beat too late but he returned the attempted favour. Rennac steadied Eirika as she got to her feet. Her shirt fluttered as she patted it down for dirt and dust; there was a tepid smile on her face, one of rightful confidence.

“Let’s get that freak that calls himself Valter, eh?” Rennac said.

Eirika, L’Arachel, and Dozla couldn’t have been in agreement more. Their voices overlapped as they chorused back a similar if haphazard eagerness to Rennac.

Eirika led the charge. Her companions marched on with her as she pressed at the iron gate that had sealed them into this first layer of the Goblin City. The enormous gates creaked as Eirika, alongside Dozla and Rennac, gave the doors a strong push. With a heave, they lurched open and Eirika and company stumbled through to the other side through a somewhat narrow gap in the ajarness of the solid, iron gateway.

L’Arachel’s saddle jingled as Ambrosius padded out first. Their noses twitched as the others followed through. It was more residential here than on the other side, they discovered. The streets were cobbled; the surrounds were hilly; and the buildings were taller than tall. Like anthills, they were built upon one another with reckless clay architecture. The roofs were wooden and badly beaten. 

A black cat crossed their paths in quite the hurry. Disappearing from behind one house to another. Eirika shivered. She hoped that wasn’t an ill omen, she was a cat person after all but she imagined that superstitions held much weight here. But the group travelled past where it had slunk, now meowing in hiding. 

They pressed on, treading careful as mice scattered about in the corners of their peripheries. Aside from the vermin and the vermin’s predators, there wasn’t a soul around but someone had to have lit the gas lamps that hung from windows. So, undaunted, they continued on through the gravely emptied streets with their eyes set on the Castle which was so, so close now.

Inside the Castle, it had not gone unnoticed that trespassers had crossed the thresholds in place to prevent them. A messenger Goblin ran amok through the halls for the throne room, yelling at the top of their lungs.

“Your Highness!” they screamed.

The Goblin King lifted his gaze from the wall. It was fixed upon the clock, admiring the angle of the dagger upon its face. It was on the barest edge of the number thirteen upon its highest brow. He was confident that time would soon run out on his darling Eirika thereby sealing her betrothment to her and, of course, Ephraim’s fate.

Ephraim was eagerly intrigued by all the goings on. As a toddler, everything was strange and bizarre making it all so very interesting. So he was content to stare at the wall as well, gurgling in the Goblin King’s lap and was behaving himself despite having been sucking on the Goblin King’s hair earlier but it didn’t taste very nice, unfortunately. But he turned his head as well as the messenger Goblin entered the foyer. Truly, all eyes were on them.

“Your highness,” the Goblin continued, breathlessly, holding a hand to their beated chest and bowing, “the girl.”

“Pardon?” the Goblin King barely asked of them.

“The girl who ate the peach and forgot everything.” the Goblin continued.

“Yes, what of her?” the Goblin King drawled.

“She’s here with the monster, Lady L’Arachel, and the dwarf. They’re coming for you.” the Goblin quickly explained.

The Goblin King was furious as he gracefully rose to his feet, clutching onto Ephraim, “What?” he snarled.

“They got through the gates.” the Goblin exclaimed.

“Hide the hostage,” the Goblin King commanded, “call out the guard. Do everything you can to stop her, understand? We must stop that girl.”

The Goblin King foisted Ephraim onto the nearest Goblin as chaos erupted around him. Bells were sounded as alarms and Goblins flurried everywhere as they attempted to carry out their King’s instructions. The guards in his throne room, adorned with spiked helmets and carrying spiked spears, hurried through the main entrance. The Goblin King yelled at them to move, move, move; to do something - anything - as cacophony and pandemonium unfolded around him.

The ringing bells chiming for an invasion were destructively loud inside of the Goblin King’s inner sanctum and yet were so quiet - barely audible - in the courtyard that the invaders had happened upon as they wandered closer to the Castle. They were truly at the mouth of the Castle now, looking up at a set of wide, stony stairs that led straight up into its main body. They passed a curious looking water fountain and a black chicken although admittedly, Eirika wasn’t certain of the superstitions regarding black chickens unlike black cats. She hoped nothing bad though as the Castle, so close, looked oh so very bad and she did not need anything else bad right now.

“Oh, piece of cake.” Rennac boasted as they drew ever closer across the courtyard. 

Almost immediately, having been taunted, at the parapets, dozens upon dozens of Goblins piped up behind the stony blocks. All of them wielding shining weapons: swords, spears, axes, and more all in galore. Down the stairs descended the cavalry: Goblins set upon the backs of draconic-looking creatures that were bipedal. All of them marching to a jingling, jangling beat. And looping from around the back, a brigade endowed with a tank came to a forward halt. 

“My bad.” Rennac soured.

From the top of the Castle, the Goblin King peered out the window. He was the only one excluded from the various exchanged looks that the invaders and the defenders were having amongst each other. Good, he thought to himself as he had Eirika and her wretched company all but surrounded so thick in what was her enemy’s territory. 

“Canon, fire!” a Goblin yelled whilst someone in the Goblin’s ranks trumpeted using a red-bronze bugle. 

The canon was lit and it sputtered. A cannon ball flew across the air and somersaulted into a wall. A warning threat. But also a signal to charge. The cavalry forces marched forth, the tails of the reptilian beasts they rode whipped about as they charged. With all these different forces colliding, chaos ensued.

Eirika and her company turned around. Nothing else to do but retreat as the forces approached them in fierce sport. Another cannon ball was shot and there was shouting and yelling. A war was all but breaking out as Eirika slipped down an alley, closely followed by her friends. All her friends save L’Arachel.

“You’re going the wrong way!” L’Arachel yelled at her faithful steed. “The battle is behind us!”

Ambrosius dashed forward. He was doggedly pursued by a handful of the cavalry forces but he was faster on all fours than they were on two claws.

“Ambrosius, can we please talk about this!” L’Arachel begged as she was taken through the streets at the dog’s instincts.

They passed a coup of chickens, riling them up. Feathers going everywhere as they beat their wings. And then turned a corner at a string of clothes hung out to dry and Ambrosius kept on going. 

“Sit!” L’Arachel yelled. 

The Goblin forces had dispersed into unorganised attacks. They ran this way and that way, carrying their weapons in search of the intruders. Eirika, Dozla, and Rennac watched them all in their madness, crowded in on each other in a hardly protected nook between houses in a scrawny alleyway presently ignored. But even so, Eirika led them bravely and boldly when it was safe to do so. In the pauses between the Goblin’s searching of other, nearby areas. It was all just a cacophony of yelling and cheering; of weapons and armour clinking and clanking. 

“Ambrosius, stay still!” L’Arachel yelled. She was, of course, the most cacophonic of all, to her achievement. 

Through the scattered Goblin forces, Eirika sprinted to another cut intersection; Dozla and Rennac hot on her heels. They clustered inside of another alley as Goblins hurried around, searching for them in hot vainness. And poor L’Arachel was still contending more with her steed than any Goblin who might try to harm a hair on her head.

“Ambrosius, if you don’t turn around this instant,” she threatened him, “I will never feed you again!”

Ambrosius ploughed through a flock of black chickens who had been innocently idling in the courtyard further back. They scattered in a mad panic as he dashed through. L’Arachel screeched and the Goblins chasing them were unfettered through the feathers and fleeing. 

Ambrosius ran past the double gates of iron only to turn around. L’Arachel blinked. Her steed turned around and confidently padded out, greeting clustering Goblin forces on the other side of the gates. L’Arachel was elated to have finally gotten through her canine coward and even more elated again to stare down the enemy. Her heart raced with the thrum of noble violence.

“Ah, that’s much better.” L’Arachel murmured, sounding pleased as punch.

Ambrosius whimpered. His confidence from before petering out as he padded through the awaiting crowd of Goblins. His head lowered and his legs trembled. L’Arachel petted him on the neck.

“Do not worry, Ambrosius, I think we’ve got them surrounded.” L’Arachel told him in a quiet voice.

The Goblins’ spears swung forth. L’Arachel was unfazed despite the spears being pointed at her from at least four cardinal directions and then some. She harrumphed smugly. She was the one at the true advantage as she could attack from all directions. What fools these Goblins were, she laughed to herself.

In the din of how so many Goblins and other creatures hastled about in the streets, Eirika soon realised that she had lost track of L’Arachel. She skidded to a halt by the fountain in the courtyard before the Castle. She, Dozla, and Rennac had a clean break - a few bare metres - between them and the Castle’s stairwell but she couldn’t do it. Not without L’Arachel.

“Where is she?” she asked, turning her head this way and that way in panic. “Where’s Lady L’Arachel?”

“Fire!” a Goblin yelled.

A different Goblin struck a match and put it to the wick of the cannon. There were bright, blue-white sparks as a cannonball was launched to much fanfare. Whooping and hollering amid the embers. It flew at a moment’s notice but the group managed to duck out of the way - so did some Goblins, narrowly avoiding friendly fire. The cannonball struck a far wall on the other side of the courtyard. Its stout, stubby legs twitched excitedly.

“I hit something, yes? No?” it asked in a delightfully squeaky voice.

Smoke settled in the aftermath of the lit cannon as Eirika ripped herself to her feet, taking Dozla’s hand, “We have to find L’Arachel.” she stage-whispered. She dashed off, tugging Dozla along and Rennac did his best to keep up with her long, human legs as well.

L’Arachel, in the meanwhile, was holding the trunk of her staff and her eyes gleamed with bravado. She took a breath in and she readjusted her eyepatch. She pulled it back, moved it to the other side of her face, and let it slap back on the rebound. Oh boy was she ready. Ambrosius growled softly whilst a Goblin in enamel red armour readied to charge. Dust was kicked up as the mount the Goblin rode upon scratched at the dirt with narrowing eyes. 

L’Arachel peeled back her lips, baring her teeth as she growled. The noise bubbled in her throat until it reached a fever pitching. Transforming into human words. She glared down the barrel of her opponent’s spiffy red helmet. 

“Charge!” she yelled, bucking her chin.

Ambrosius darted forward, a second ahead of their opponent and his repitalian mount. The Goblin’s spear - long, bladed - lunged forward but L’Arachel ducked. With the slightest jerk of her staff, its end poked up at the Goblin’s elbow. L’Arachel pushed up her staff before retreating it back. She knocked the Goblin off his course as Ambrosius dodged for her. The Goblin was spun asunder until its mount lost balance. Both tumbling to the crowd. A whirlwind effect of comrade Goblins and their mounts were drawn into the ensuing chaos and confusion until all smashed into ground with a great clatter of armour and claws.

“Tally ho!” L’Arachel boasted.

L’Arachel laughed proudly, thriving off the success of her first - and only - attack. The Goblins moaned and booed. She gave Ambrosius a jab to the side and he took off. L’Arachel still laughed as they zipped ahead. And zipped ahead straight into an overhanging sign for a tavern. Her muzzle made a mighty thunk against the wood. She groaned as she collided with it at the perfect height and in what was almost a fitting comeuppance for what she did against the Goblins, she was dismounted in the impact. Ambrosius was all but oblivious as he kept running. L’Arachel pulled herself up, woozy, as she watched his fluffy, rust-coloured tail disappear into a nearby building.

“Ambrosius, you coward!” she snapped.

The door slammed behind him. L’Arachel made feisty, ferret-like noises as she tried to scratch at the door. She could hear Ambrosius whimper inside. L’Arachel made louder, more incensed noises in response.

And to her good fortune, Eirika and company could hear her high pitched conniptions above the ordinance of the Goblins defending against them. They kept running towards where they heard L’Arachel scream and shout but it led them back to the thick of the fighting. Here, there, everywhere: it was all overrun with Goblins running and sprinting about. It was all just a hair’s breadth of getting caught, how weapons collided and stung against the walls to scare them.

Eirika glanced at a house, “Let’s hide in there.” she suggested.

She opened up the door and snuck inside, she ducked her head Rennac hovered behind her on the threshold, glancing worriedly back at Dozla who lugged along last. The door was barely tall enough for Rennac, let alone Eirika and let alone Dozla.

“And what about him?” Rennac asked as he skulked inside.

It turned into a non-issue amid the battlefield. Whilst eirika and Rennac used the door already there, Dozla simply made his own. Goblins heard them making a commotion so they clustered at the other side of the house. Dozla grabbed at the seam of the wall and with barely any effort at all, he made the wall into a door. He shoved it towards the Goblins, bowling them over. Crumbs of debris were loosened from the vertice as Dozla came inside with Eirika and Rennac.

His tail wagged and from the other side, more Goblins approached with swords at the ready. Dozla swung his tail around, knocking over the Goblins, winding them and batting them on the ground. He shuffled inside, deeper into the tiny building, and he propped the wall up behind him, closing it like he would a door.

The Goblins reared back to their feet and converged. They yelled and jeered as they banged their various weapons on the wall. It shifted and jumped with how they attacked the broken wall. Planks of the roofing began to fall as the house shed dust and more. Soon the whole of it was rattling as the Goblins assailed it. However, unbeknownst to the Goblins giving it their all, not all the shaking of the house was coming from them or the outside.

The shaking and shaking of the house’s turret intensified until finally the conical roof popped off. From underneath, Dozla emerged, ripping off the roof and tossing it aside with ease. Dust clouded but he breathed it in, unhindered, as he propped up his elbows on the new rim of the roofing.

“You, in there! You're surrounded!” a Goblin yelled.

“Hm, surrounded…?” Dozla murmured, intrigued by the notion.

He scanned the area with a slow, doleful look. He behaved rather tranquilly compared to what was happening below. Not only were the Goblins attacking, so were his companions. The Goblins had punched through the windows and Eirika had picked up a frying pan to smack them with. Dozla was stacking chairs and pushing the table against the door whilst Eirika fended off the Goblins from other points of entry. The whole house trembled with all the movement in and around it. It was hot and hectic inside. Glancing up at Dozla who had clambered up the halls on a teeny-tiny ladder was all but a breath of fresh air; his kangaroo-shaped legs dangling.

“Dozla!” Eirika yelled out, craning her head upwards for her voice to carry. “Summon the rocks!”

Dozla bellowed, more confused than aggressive. He batted away a Goblin that had managed to scale the turret-like facade of the house. Lightweight spears flew up, wobbling, at him. Dozla barely had to breathe in their direction to turn those away. He heard Eirika screaming and yelling below but it was garbled in the midst of the rest of the ordinance. But Dozla got the gist of whatever fuss Eirika was kicking up. He was having the same idea.

He breathed in deeply and let his voice resound through the walls of the City. Through every street, alley, and gutter. The dust around him shook as he bellowed. His low howl did not go unheard by a soul.

Even L’Arachel paused to listen to it as she rapped on the door. Her ears twitched as she listened to Dozla howl. He and the others were - assumably - nearby, L’Arachel realised. It made her urge Ambrosius all the more hastily; she kept beating on the dodgy wooden door that he cowered behind.

“Open up this door, Ambrosius!” she yelled.

She tapped on the door with her paw. Someone else, behind her, tapped on her shoulder with their spear. L’Arachel growled, hackles rising, as she looked over her shoulder with a glare in her eyes. Her bravado vanished on her when she was spooked by how many sharp, pointy things had suddenly been thrust at her. L’Arachel made a strangled, bestial noise as she was stared down by four or five Goblins and all their mounts and their weapons.

Still, L’Arachel haughtily brandished her staff and gave a jaunty movement with her shoulders as she relaxed. They did not have her where they wanted. She had them where she wanted them. 

“So, had enough have you?” she asked.

The Goblins glanced amongst themselves, bewilderment coming off their helmeted expressions.

“Alright, drop thy weapons and I will see you well treated in your surrender.” L’Arachel cockily told them.

Before anything further could happen, they continued to hear Dozla’s howl. The ground underfoot had violent tremors and buildings quaked. They all looked up to the sky, dark and swirling with stars, awaiting some sort of grand interference. 

Inside the house, Eirika held onto a table through the quaking but she couldn’t do it forever. Not when there were Goblins trying to get through the window and taking apart the walls to get in. She heaved herself to the other side and grabbed a plate. She smashed it across the Goblin in the window’s face. He fell back, dizzy, and she grabbed the curtains. She tied them up, knotting them so as to give her precious seconds should they tear. Her hands trembled through the shaking as Dozla summoned his greatest allies: the mere rocks of the world around them.

Everyone stopped to listen to the last echoes of Dozla’s roar. His mouth closed and for a split second, there was silence. But the silence turned to strange clacking noises. At the far side of the Goblin City, its metal gates opened, creaking, to a cluster of boulders. They pressed past the gates opening too slow for them as they responded to the last of Dozla’s howling.

Countless boulders of every size tumbled through the City. An army of their own as they surged forward. The cavalry forces were the first of the Goblin Forces to scatter. Their mounts terrified of the sight of all these countless boulders coming towards them. Muttering and confusion weaved through the loose gaps in the tight forces of the boulders rolling through. Those on foot abandoned their weapons as the boulders bounded closer and closer, wreaking further havoc through the Goblin City.

“Next time,” L’Arachel boasted, sticking close to the threshold of the doorway, “surrender when I ask of you.”

She watched with revelry as the Goblins scattered. They ran and dashed madly, trying to avoid being crushed by the boulders. Their course was distinctly to the middle of the road, the noise of their tumbling drowning out the indistinct shouting of the Goblins they chased indiscriminately through the streets.

“Good grief.” L’Arachel whistled to herself, amazed, thankful she was not on the business end of all these boulders.

She watched as a gaggle of Goblins in black, spiked armour attempted to hold their ground against the boulders in the middle of the excessive pandemonium. Chickens clucked in panic and many more of the Goblins’ fellow guards and soldiers were similarly frazzled but not this brigade as they attempted to withstand a boulder charged right for them.

“Steady men, hold your ground.” the leader of this brigade proclaimed in a strong voice.

They puffed out their chests and stood feet hips width apart. Any and all stance against the boulder was useless. It pounded them clean over; bowling them like pins. They grunted and growled in the wake of the boulder. It kept on going, leaving them muddled behind. 

“Okay, I take it back, run for your lives!” the so-called leader of this brigade proclaimed in a weak voice.

The group dispersed and L’Arachel went straight back to knocking on the door, demanding that Ambrosius opened up to her. But even the rapid, raucous rapping on the door - though loud - was not loud enough to rise above the general clamour. Goblins were screaming at one another, the sound of the boulders was inescapable. The loudest of all. The low rumble echoed and echoed until it became deafening.

And from high, from his perch on the windowsill in the throne room, the Goblin King observed with disgust. They were fighting each other more than resisting the rocks or others inconveniencing the intruders. Useless, useless, useless, that’s all they were. He couldn’t even trust them to pour soup out of a shoe if the instructions were written on the heel. But the more he peered over his ruined forces, the less he was able to see of his intruders. Of his darling. His heart pounded slow as he searched the City for Eirika.

For good reason, too. Eirika kept close to the shoddy, overhanging verandas of the houses as she led Rennac and Dozla back through the City. Doubling over, staying close, and searching for L’Arachel. They were light on their feet, as much as they could be, as they darted through the alleys, trying to find their lost fuzzy creature.

A light was lit and a cannon fire followed. The machine, taller than the average Goblin, spat and sputtered, clouded with white-blue smoke before firing something at them. Eirika leapt out of the way, hitting the ground, and Dozla kept to the side. The cannonball hit the side of a wall, making it rain debris: planks of wood and chunks of stone.

“Ha, ha, missed!” Rennac taunted.

Eirika shook out flecks of dust, “Come on,” she urged them, “we have to keep going.”

They kept running around, through flocks of chickens and flocks of Goblins. It was getting darker and darker, worsening the confusion. They chose left and right turns at random but all they did was go in circles. They wound up at the mouth of the Castle again. The Goblin presence was thick here and L’Arachel was still nowhere to be seen. Or heard. 

Blocking their path forward was a trio of Goblins in jaunty armour; blocking their path backwards were the boulders that Dozla summoned. In the heartbeats of hesitation - backwards or forwards, left or right - the two problems collided and solved one another. Dozla howled and the rocks bounced forward, smashing against the Goblins, bowling them over, dispersing them. 

But of course, it was always one thing after another with the Goblin City and the Labyrinth at large. 

An automatic cannon had been going off intermittently well before Eirika and company had returned to the courtyard. And it was now time for it to blow again. Sparks spouted out of the nozzle and the cannonball followed, spikes scraping against the piping. 

Eirika groaned as Rennac pulled her aside. Dozla lumbered after them, as solid as he was, he could probably tank the hit but it would be unwise. They took cover by the fountain and braced themselves. The cannonball lunged. It sped through the air, crashing against the fountain. It all but shattered on impact. Porcelain and clay fragments burst everywhere. Eirika swallowed a scream as she protected her head, her nerves aflame. 

Dozla bellowed and he summoned a rock. The group crept out from the sides of the destroyed statue. Eirika scanned her surroundings and she still couldn’t see L’Arachel and her damn dog. But Dozla, meanwhile, had a smorgasbord of boulders to manipulate. With his howling, he managed to push up a boulder in the perfect position to topple the intermittent cannon. Rennac watched, holding his breath, as Dozla let the boulder tumble down and boom.

The cannon was decimated beneath the falling weight of the boulder. The cannon exploded. Blunt, metallic shards flew off in every direction within a plume of grey smoke and blue sparks. When it dissipated, the boulder sat where the cannon had, upright and looking oddly proud. And with all the commotion, Goblin forces in the area fled, all but emptying the courtyard.

Eirika ran up to the stairs, hoping for a higher vantage point than just the flat of the courtyard. She looked around and took a breath.

“L’Arachel!” she yelled. “Lady L’Arachel, where are you?” 

Eirika’s heart trembled as she feared she wouldn’t get a response through the pandemonium. And yet…

“Coming!” L’Arachel shrieked. 

Eirika beamed. Heartened that L’Arachel was safe and nearby, she turned to ascend the stairs. They could meet there. At the top. By the foyer which was marked by the Castle’s main entryway. 

Upon Ambrosius’ back, L’Arachel scampered through the streets of the Goblin City. She gave a buck of her reins and Ambrosius sped up. He dashed through the streets, blitzing past Goblins and goodness knows what else as L’Arachel kept her eyes on the prize. Back to the Castle, back to the courtyard, back to her Lady Eirika who was waiting for her.

At the edge of the Castle, the main entryway was a feat of fortification. The Castle doors were gargantuan and forged of ochre red steel. It was patterned with cascading scales like the rind of a dragon’s back. Huge black chains kept it locked up tight. 

Eirika appeared diminutive at its foot as she slammed all weight against it in the vain hope that it would budge. Dozla swaggered up to it and Eirika stepped aside. She watched as Dozla pushed it open, grunting and gasping as he did so. The chains split under the pressure that Dozla exerted as he forced the giant door of the Castle open. Together, he, Eirika, and Rennac began to pile through the gap between the Castle doors that had been created.

“Oh, wow, Sir Dozla, that is quite the feat of strength you know!” L’Arachel exclaimed and she yanked on the reins, “Ambrosius, steady, halt boy.” she whispered.

Eirika was ecstatic to see L’Arachel finally arriving alongside them after splitting up. She beamed and welcomed L’Arachel back, L’Arachel holding her paws up to Eirika and Eirika taking them briefly. Holding them for a moment before letting go. They were both brave and courageous and more: on the threshold of the Goblin King’s Castle. With Rennac and Dozla, too, Eirika was certain she could rescue Ephraim from this place.

The Castle had an internal atmosphere of sheer silence, oppressively so. It was eerily empty on the inside. The hallways were elongated. It was all just like the hollowed out of a wasp’s nest. Just the same winding hallways of grey-light brown. Not artworks, no potted plants, no nothing, for the most part, at least. Very, very occasionally, they passed by a tattered tapestry that looked as though some beastly child had shredded it in a fit of rage. 

But the quartet of companions followed its corridors regardless. Following their instincts which were leading them up a narrow, spiralling staircase. They just knew - somehow - that the Goblin King Valter would be awaiting them deep within his Castle from a perch on high.

As they ascended stairwells, feeling dizzied by every twist and turn within the floor plan, they pressed on despite how their feet ached. Ascending a third or fourth level of the Castle (they had lost count of how many floors they had already passed and then some), it began to darken. Grey-white tallow candles melted, lit, on the walls. Barrels reeking of booze were dotted here and there and there were even disused planter boxes with the faces of mythological creatures - griffins, dragons, unicorns - here and there, too. They knew they would happen upon a cache of treasures soon and crossing a threshold, they did.

They discovered the throne room. The crowning, dingy jewel of the Castle and the height of the Goblin King’s leisure.

Eirika searched around the room, something of a skip in her step. Even though the fatigue of being on her feet all day had finally caught up with her, being this high up in the Castle rejuvenated her. She was so, so close to finding her brother. He had to be here. The room was so deceptively still.

It was a mess. Grey and dusty with cobwebs on any jumble of surfaces. There was a pit in the centre of the room which was strewn with reams of various fabrics. A tankard was propped up to the right and scrap metal rusted across from it. To the far wall of the throne was the throne itself. Even though this was the throne room, the throne was somehow the least noticeable element of the room. It was made of bone and draped with a deteriorating, purple cloak. 

Eirika paced around the pit. He wasn’t here. She wasn’t sure who she was thinking of - whom she wanted to see more, Ephraim or Valter - but neither of them were here. Her heart raced and raced some more when her eyes fell upon the clock on the wall. It was bronze with a ringed face; the numbers were golden and elegant; thirteen was once against given the position of power upon the face and her stomach plummeted when she saw how close the hour hand and minute hand were to the strike of thirteen. 

“No…” Eirika exclaimed with premature despair, eyes widening. She had mere minutes to find Ephraim or else…

But she tightened her resolve instead of allowing it to loosen. She looked around for any hint of where Ephraim or the Goblin King would be and she saw a postern that she had previously overlooked. She rushed over it, fingers edging along the faint crack that spilt the scantest starlight but she managed to reef it open: a total wedge of stone that felt coarse on her hands.

“This- This is the only way they could have gone.” Eirika grunted as stone scraped against stone.

Eirika was basked in blue moonlight when she finished shoving aside the postern’s stone cover. She moved a foot up the first step of the tiny stairway it was hiding. She turned her head to face her friends and she let her breathing even out. She looked beautiful. Beautiful but grave as a stern expression came over her brows.

“I have to do this alone.” she confessed solemnly. 

“P-Pardon?” L’Arachel sputtered.

“Huh, what? Why?” Rennac asked as well in a grumbled voice.

Even Dozla looked surprised and concerned beneath the veil of his shaggy, green hair.

“This is just the way it has to be. How it must be done.” Eirika said with a strange grace about her. It was almost wizened but not quite as it was mired with imaginative, girlish fantasy.

L’Arachel cocked her head, “I think I understand the base feeling. If that is how it must be done then that is just the way it has to be.”

Eirika made an appreciative expression but became sullied when she glanced towards the postern and the clock. She was anxious about the precious few minutes that she had before time expired on her. As invigorating as L’Arachel’s speeches were, they really didn’t have time for them.

Instinctively, L’Arachel understood that, “But if you change your mind,” she added, “should you need us…”

Dozla moaned, nodding his head.

“Yes, should you need us...” Rennac said, echoing L’Arachel’s sentiments.

“I’ll call.” Eirika affirmed confidently. She took another step up the stairwell inside the hidey-hole of the postern. “Thank you, all of you.”

Rennac beamed and Dozla straightened his back. L’Arachel relaxed her grip on Ambrosius’ reins and Eirika went up another step. All their gazes held dear and steady. Eirika felt calmed by it. Knowing they were so close as she crossed the threshold. With poise, Eirika turned her back on them but only literally and she entered the moonbeams that filtered through from the tower conjoined to the throne room by the postern. 

Eirika was swift as she followed the spiral of the stairwell. The stone was surprisingly sturdy all around considering the decrepit aura of not only the Castle but the City and the whole of the Labyrinth. She kept going and going until the stairwell suddenly cut off. Eirika felt the swell of vertigo as she looked into the insides of the conjoined tower and tried to make sense of what she saw at this sudden cut off at the edge.

She was awed by the visual confusion that she had happened upon. Impossible architecture wormed across the space which was so much bigger on the inside than she suspected. Upside down stairways - wide and pale brown - criss-crossed along the ceiling. Further pathways twisted down into archways. There were entryways strewn through at random, allowing futiles beams of moonlight to filter through. Trying to take it all in at once was impossible, Eirika realised as her eyes were bewildered and her stomach knotted with an ill dread.

Eirika took a step away from the edge, trying to lessen that feeling in her gut but she reminded herself of a worse feeling. Not being able to return home and not being able to return home with her brother… So, she pressed on. She went right and down the set of stairs; going down she was shoulder-width with a different set going diagonal. She came to a flat zone, passed by an entryway to nowhere, and had to go up again in front. That took her to a different section far away from where she had entered from. 

She thought to turn left because right was a cliff but even though she could see the sheer drop and all its vertigo inducing glory, she was curious about it. Don’t take dead ends for granted and the like. It was valuable advice so Eirika inched closer to the edge.

Below, the face of the Goblin King appeared and he was doing the same as she. Inching closer to that edge so he could go up and she could go down. Eirika gasped. He smirked and had a saunter about him as he drew closer to the upward vertices. He stood, feet hips’ width apart, and perfectly upside down below Eirika.

“You know Eirika,” the Goblin King called out to her, taunting but sing-song, “you turn my world, you precious thing.”

Eirika’s skin prickled to hear such praise.

Like a pin, the Goblin King dropped. He stepped out over the edge and disappeared. Eirika came down to her knees, holding onto the edge as she scanned for where he had gone but he had vanished into the thin air. 

“You starve me,” he said and Eirika looked up, she could hear him but she still couldn’t see him, “you near exhaust me.”

The Goblin King’s stance was not a skulk but a stride. Over the sideways walls of this twisted domain. Eirika could hear his footsteps. They soft and yet, they boomed through this bizarre knot of various, overlapping stairwells and paths and entryways.

“Everything I have done,” the Goblin King spoke and Eirika turned around - how? When? - and he was there, “I have done for you.”

He strode nearer and nearer to her. Eirika stood her ground despite how her heart thumped in her chest. He was magnificent. A dualism of beauty and hideousness. His hair cascaded down his back in waves of cobalt but his eyes were sunken in and gaunt. He was tall, too, a good head or maybe more taller than her and Eirika knew well of his diminutive she was before her. He completely walked past her; through her. Intangible. And he kept on walking, even as she turned on her heel and tried to call out to him but words failed in her mouth.

The Goblin King lifted a finger to her, pointed, and told her: “I move the moon for no one and yet. You compel me like none other, my ripe little peach.”

He flicked his hair off his shoulders and he kept walking. He walked right over the edge; on the tight, short surface of the edge and paced on through to the other side down below. Eirika watched, horrified and intrigued all at once.

Eirika hurried around to the other side, hoping to catch him where he beckoned her. She could not dare to tread where he strode so confidently. He darted through the archway and it looped around unnaturally. When she strained her ears, Eirika was certain she could hear the Goblin King’s footsteps, boots and all, directly below her. 

“You’ve run so long, you’ve come so far.” the Goblin King taunted her, calling out to her. 

Eirika followed his voice, his footsteps all to the very edge, down a flight of stone stairs and onto an abandoned platform. Nowhere to go in front, only to double back behind. At this plateau, the Goblin King met her there. He raised himself up with ease to meet in front of her. Eirika gasped and stumbled back as the Goblin King was unflappable in his pursuit of her.

“What’s that expression on your face, darling?” he asked. “Your eyes can be so cruel, you know.”

Eirika glared and the Goblin King produced his crystal ball. It was delicate in his large hands. 

“And I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “I know I can be cruel as well.” There was a snarl on his lips and Eirika saw his yellowy teeth.

The Goblin King once more enchanted Eirika’s eyes with how he toyed with the crystal ball. It rolled along the edge of his hand and he let it fall like music notes down his knuckles and then up again before he swivelled his hand. The crystal ball returned to the nest of his palm and his fingers curled in over it. Protectively.

He then spun on his heel and he threw the crystal ball. Eirika tried to lunge across for it, arm stretched, but she was seconds too late. The Goblin King laughed and they both heard the tinkle of glass hitting stone. It didn’t break. It bounced. It bounced and bounced up the stairs and Eirika watched.

Sitting at the top, dressed in tied up pyjamas, was a baby with a fuzzy mop of bluish-turquoise hair. The baby caught the crystal ball and gurgled happily, waving it about.

“Is that… Ephraim?” Eirika asked, horrified, as she turned her head to the Goblin King. “What have you done to my brother?”

The Goblin King gave a bestial laugh. A non-answer; he remained still though, folding his arms and giving a glower. He spurred Eirika onwards, answer or no answer to her question, regardless. 

Her brother - a baby or not - was within sight. She still had time, she was certain, so she ran back up the stairs. She craned her head up and she saw him begin to crawl along the floor, determined as only a baby could be. He was going downwards whereas she was going upwards. The stairwells barely intersecting or even passing one another by. 

Eirika kept trying, though. No matter how confusing the world around her appeared, she kept trying to cross it so she could reunite with Ephraim. She kept going in the direction she felt was forward. Even when it bent sideways or twisted elsewhere, she kept going. The Goblin King watched as Eirika searched for her brother who had vanished into the darkness cast across the various juttings out of the internal labyrinth. 

But as she searched, eyes scanning left to right then right to left again, she couldn’t find Ephraim. He had disappeared but in the sinking feeling, Eirika looked up instead of letting it drag her down with despair. Her eyes widened. She saw Ephraim sitting on the ceiling, completely unaffected by the height or even the bloodrush that he had to be feeling. He was waving the crystal ball around in a plump hand, smiling and gurgling with cherubic pink cheeks. He was adorable but in so, so much danger. 

She had to get him out of there. She craned her head around, looking for some corner which fed into a stairwell downwards but it was all so impossible. But she tried anyway. She circled back around and tried to get higher but Ephraim seemed to get lower and it was all giving her a mighty big headache.

But the Goblin King couldn’t say that he wasn’t unimpressed with Eirika’s valiant efforts. He knew, deep inside, that he couldn’t live within Eirika’s heart, it was bittersweet but he had his own efforts to maintain as well, he supposed. A certain lonesomeness was fond of him. Eirika was truly intrepid as she tried to navigate the various inclines and stairwells of this strange space within the Castle’s tower.

Ephraim had begun to climb downwards, away from Eirika, completely ignorant that she was even trying to help him. She kept closing in on him but he had the advantage of the architecture. He happily swung out his chunky, little legs over the edge. Eirika ran beneath him; she didn’t want to take her chances and try coaxing him over the edge and trying to catch him. She was never the athlete between them, after all, so Eirika dashed onwards.

Eirika turned a corner and she looked around. She had been so close to Ephraim a second ago and now, as she scanned her surroundings, he was way to the other side. Crawling along some stairs going downwards where Eirika had found a rare, somewhat large flat plateau within the confusion. 

“Ephraim!” Eirika called.

He seemed to respond to her voice. He was drawn out close to the edge of the stairs. Eirika watched with intense trepidation as Ephraim looked down at her.

“Please, Ephraim!” she called again.

She was uncertain of what he was going to do. She was also uncertain if she ought to be relieved or frustrated when he decided to toddle off again. Eirika grimaced but she continued to go around and around in circles for him. He started to crawl towards a sideways entryway and Eirika tried to grapple with the stairs, using them as leverage to go upwards even though they were slanted all the wrong ways.

The Goblin King was intrigued by the way Eirika’s voice echoed through the stairwells and the darkness for her brother. He wandered out from where he kept himself in the stillness, he peeked over the edges of the various stairways and paths that clashed around him.

Ephraim still clutched the crystal ball as he got himself up on his feet. He hobbled, one step, cute and wobby, at a time, as he hefted himself up a straight-looking stairwell. Eirika rounded the corner and got where Ephraim had been sitting before. Her heart wavered, discouraged, when she realised they had traded places. She urged herself to close into the edge again, even though she really didn’t want to, and she looked down.

Oh, she thought with a heavy sharpness. “Ephraim?” she murmured, looking down.

She was directly above him now. He was sitting on the sanded smooth rim of stone. Darkness dwelled in the depths below, just beyond where he idly kicked his legs. He was tapping the crystal ball on the ground, curious about the sounds that it was making. 

He looked up at her and smiled with wet lips. Eirika smiled a faltering smile. She took a breath and clenched her shut tight. And then she jumped off. She swung out her arms and she let herself sink downwards through the air. 

It was so much longer down that she thought Eirika realised as she opened her eyes. And then she realised why. Gravity had given way; the very stone of the walls had given way; she couldn’t even see Ephraim below as she used her faith on this strange new realm inside the Castle. The air was coloured in crimson-indigo hues as blocks of stone came loose and floated with her. All jumbled bits and pieces as Eirika gracefully landed on the ground. A level, flat platform just for her.

She looked around, worried and suspicious, but kept her hands by her side. Not close to her chest like she wanted to cower. She had to remain strong. For Ephraim; for the others; for herself.

The Goblin King slunk out of the darkness, from behind a veil at the entryway. He looked sullen and pathetic as he stepped closer. Eirika stood her ground and when their gazes met, they smouldered. 

“Give me my brother.” Eirika demanded of him in a calm, even voice.

“Eirika, beware.” the Goblin King Valter warned her. He sauntered in closer to her, his cape trailing, hair blowing in the faintest breeze. He looked a gorgeous vision like the inside of an erotic nightmare. “I have been generous up until now, and I can be cruel.”

“Generous?” Eirika guffawed though her interest piqued in what Valter had to say. “What have you done that is now generous?”

“Everything.” he told her.

The Goblin King circled her like he was a vulture circling prey. Eirika remained tranquil as she let him pace. Let him do as pleased to intimidate her, she remained unfazed with her shoulders back, her head slightly tilted to the right, and a unique, moonlit air about her. An aura of grace and poise that was dreamy in the dark.

“Everything that you wanted, I have done.” the Goblin King fairly reminded her. “You asked that your brother be taken, I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time,” the Goblin King continued and he summoned a clock face to this abyss, he wagged his finger in front of it and its hands spun madly, “I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for you.”

Eirika moved with him. A waltz but they didn’t touch. Yet it was so fervently hot under the collar regardless. She simply gazed, hard and sharp like an uncut moonstone. The Goblin King ceased his pacing and stood in front of her with a weary expression. She remained unchanged and stern. 

“I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me.” Valter told her, a touch breathless. His brows furrowed in. “Isn’t that generous?”

Eirika was silent. 

The Goblin King waited.

And she spoke slowly. Deliberately. “Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way to the Castle beyond the Goblin City.” 

She stepped closer. Her eyes burned white hot. Valter stepped back. A twitch in his claw-like hand. He swallowed and he was intimidated by the young woman before him. 

“For my will is as strong as yours,” Eirika continued to recite, “and my-”

“Stop.” Valter snarled and he thrust out a hand in further protest of Eirika’s incantation. “Look, Eirika…”

“Yes?” Eirika prompted him.

“Look at what I’m offering you.” Valter replied.

With a flourish of his hands, an opaque and iridescent bubble appeared in the apex of his fingers. On its shining surface were both their reflections rendered awash in a light blue illumination.

“Your dreams.” Valter continued in a soft voice.

“And my Kingdom is as great.” Eirika replied.

She was unflinching in her swiftness to speak. Valter had expected a second of hesitation and he didn’t even get so much as a flicker. His heart stirred deep in the cavern of his ribcage as he felt himself wane before the might that Eirika possessed. And he couldn’t love her more for it as he kept his arm straight as she kept her eyes up, at his own, not even acknowledging what surreal and dear images may reside within the bubble that crystallised at his hold.

“I ask for so little.” Valter pleaded with her, stepping back as she stepped forward, he drew in his arm and kept the crystal ball close to his chest. 

Eirika was dubious but quiet.

“Just let me rule you,” Valter implored, “and you can have everything that you want.”

At long last, Eirika broke her long held gaze with Valter. She faltered and for a moment, he thought he had a glimmer of hope to seduce her but instead, Eirika was searching for the words of that passage from the book…

“Kingdom is as great…” she muttered, brow furrowing as she tried to recall what was next.

Sensing an opening her defence, Valter lifted the crystal ball to her. Hoping she would glimpse something in the crystal ball that would seal her to him forever and more.

“Damn…” Eirika muttered and she looked away again. “I can never remember that line.”

“Just fear me, love me, do as I say,” Valter begged of her, holding the crystal ball up to her, “and I will be your slave.” His voice was husky.

“My kingdom is as great…” Eirika whispered, looking down, ignoring how Valter implored with her as sweet a temptation as it was. “My kingdom is great…”

Eirika lifted her head as she breathed shallowly through her mouth. Her eyes were wide with an epiphany. Valter was expectant. Stern. Still he attempted to sway her with temptation, holding up her dreams spun in glass and crystals. Eirika was ready.

“You have no power over me.” Eirika said, breathless and her heart was racing.

She came forward, on her tip-toes, and she placed her hands on Valter. He flinched at her gentle touch. She closed her eyes and she kissed him. He muffled some sort of frightened noise into her mouth as she kissed him ardently. She thought it was a wonderful, magnificent kiss that allowed her to blossom with elation. She melted into him, giving her all and he gave nothing in response. His heart trembled as he who used to master time was now made its lowly servant.

The clock that Valter had summoned earlier to illustrate his generosity by bending time struck thirteen. The chime inside of it rang and Valter was helpless against it. Against Eirika. It was exactly as she said. He had no power over her but she had all power over him.

Eirika drew back, returned to the balls of her feet and she watched as Valter disappeared before her. The cloak he was draped in fell off the angles of his large, stern body and he turned faint. Opalescent. And in the blink of an eye, he was gone. Turned to a tiny beast. A little winged lizard with blue, ridged scales and grotesquely yellow eyes. 

The clock kept chiming but the tune of it had changed. Deepened. Became more akin to that of the chime of a grandfather clock. With every ring, Valter’s wings flapped and he escaped through an open window. Eirika looked around. No longer was she standing at the bottom of an indigo and crimson abyss, she was standing at the bottom of her house’s living room stairs.

She looked around. It was exactly as it was the morning before. The goldish red rug that was sprawled out before the fireplace; the white walls with embossed, wallpaper accents of a creamy blue; all the odds and ends that her parents had collected over the years. It was all exactly as it was and as it should be. 

It had stopped raining, Eirika realised, and it was still very dark outside. Valter was gone. Well and truly. Ephraim, she thought to herself. Her heart simpered and she threw herself to yet another staircase. She rushed up the stairs, calling her brother’s name.

She made it to his room and she turned on the light, uncertain of what to expect. Her face lit up with joy when she saw her brother rouse from sleep. He held his head in his hand as he muttered to himself with vast displeasure but he looked glad to see her. He choked out a smile.

“What just happened?” he asked. “Was it real?”

“It was.” Eirika replied, quick and empathetic. 

She didn’t have proof but Ephraim didn’t press her for some. He simply beckoned her closer and with a guilty, crestfall expression, she obeyed. She sat next to him and he put his arm around her. She leaned into it.

“I’m sorry…” she whimpered.

“I think this is some dream, some delusion-” Ephraim began.

“It’s not. It wasn’t.” Eirika interrupted him.

“But I’m just glad that its all over.” Ephraim confessed.

“Do you still have it?” Eirika asked and she looked up at him pleadingly.

“Have what?” Ephraim asked.

“The Solar Brace?” Eirika asked in return.

Ephraim thought for a moment, “Oh, yes, that charm bracelet. Yes, it’s in one of my drawers, why do you ask?”

Eirika pushed up her sleeve. She did have proof after all, she could have cried.

“I bartered away my twin Lunar Brace to a Dwarf as incentive to help me and now, he’s one of my most tried and true friends.” Eirika explained.

“You sound insane.” Ephraim laughed.

“Maybe I am.” Eirika whispered back.

“Do you want it?” he asked. “My Solar Brace or whatever it is?”

Eirika shook her head. “No, I don’t, but I do want to give you something.” She pushed herself up, hands raking against Ephraim’s chest. “I’m just. Glad you're safe, is all. And gosh, this all started over a petty argument. I know your homework means a lot to me, just like my drama queenness means a lot to me but I think I have a better solution to it than just electrocuting my poor Orson. I have a lot of scrap fabric in my room, you know. How about we do a project involving dropping eggs off high buildings instead.”

Ephraim laughed and he pet the top of his sister’s head. “You sound… different now, Eirika.”

“I do?” she commented.

“Like you're older than me all of sudden. More mature.” Ephraim explained.

Eirika poked his face playfully. “You were turned into a baby of all things for a second there.” she joked.

“Forget Father letting you date,” Ephraim scowled, poking Eirika back, “it's me you have to worry about. With your terrible taste in men - a  _ Goblin  _ King, really? - no way in hell I’m letting you pick if you think cruel tyrants who kick chickens for fun is boyfriend material.”

Eirika laughed. She didn’t know how to reply to such good-natured, brotherly possessiveness so she let it be a fond joke for now at least but it still cut like a paper cut.

“It really was real, wasn’t it?” Ephraim sighed.

“Every bit of it.” Eirika confirmed.

“Guess it’ll have to be a secret between siblings, huh? I can’t explain any of it and I’m not going to attempt to.” Ephraim said.

“Thank you.” Eirika replied.

“Well, it's late Eirika, good night.” Ephraim said as he let go of her.

Eirika got up and she smiled wearily, “Good night, Ephraim.” 

“Oh,” he said and he reached out for something, “don’t forget Orville.”

“Orson.” Eirika growled, snatching the teddy bear away.

But holding him didn’t quite feel the same. Orson was still dear to her but not quite as obsessively so as before but she did appreciate Ephraim giving him back all the less. With that, Eirika was ready to go.

“Should I turn out the lights?” she asked in his doorframe.

“Please, I’d like to get some sleep now, if you wouldn’t mind.” Ephraim replied.

“Alright, good night.” Eirika said as she turned off the lights.

“Sweet dreams.” Ephraim bade her from within the darkness of his room.

She saw him wriggle down and pull the sheets over him. Eirika smiled. She was glad he could get some rest at all. If his experiences in the Goblin King’s inner sanctum were anything as harrowing as the ones she had had out in the Labyrinth, he would need it. And yet she didn’t feel emotionally tired. Only physically so.

She crossed the hallway and entered her bedroom but rather than attempt to get some sleep, she sat at her vanity. She wanted to do a spot of redecorating. She put away the music box with the ballroom dancer; she plucked a photo off her the frame of her mirror. She placed them together, tenderly, in a drawer to be locked. 

Downstairs, she heard the front door open and close then a voice, “Eirika? Are you awake still, princess?” her Father’s voice cried out. 

Eirika could just imagine Ephraim groaning about how he never got any sleep in this place. She closed the drawer and she flicked her hair over her shoulder.

“Yes, Daddy, I’m home.” she called back. She cringed and mentally apologised to Ephraim, again. 

“That’s good, good night, princess - and good night, Ephraim, too, son.” he called out.

“Go to sleep already!” Ephraim yelled.

Eirika giggled. It was nice to feel that her family felt like her family again after everything. Gosh. Everything. Her eyes flicked up to the mirror and her jaw dropped.

Dozla? 

She saw him, all big and hairy standing by her bed and she blinked. She turned around and he wasn’t there. Except for when she looked into the mirror. He, L’Arachel, and Rennac were all there. Her eyes started to water and she thought of her last words to them. Oh how a proper goodbye would have felt better but that was good too. She believed them. She knew if she ever needed something - anything at all, for no reason at all - that they would be there to help. 

A tear dribbled down her face. She swatted away with the whole of her palm. She looked up at the mirror again and they were gone. Her heart lurched and she realised she was tired. Teetering even closer to emotionally tired so she got up. Redecorating could wait until the morning.

She plopped herself on her bed. She was spread eagle, at first, but her light was still on. Its fluorescence was too much for her so she hooked her arm over her head and sighed. Much better.

And… And it wasn’t just Rennac, Dozla, and L’Arachel who had changed her for the better, Eirika thought to herself, but Valter as well. They had their place in her heart and so did he. It was just… different. A different type of comfort borne of the imagination. Thinking about Valter gave her a tingle down her spine whereas thinking about her friends softened her heart yet fortified it.

Eirika sighed. She realised she was still wearing her shirt and her blue jeans. Eirika chuckled to herself, no wonder she was uncomfortable. So, she remedied it. She jimmied herself out of her jeans and she let go of her breath. It felt nice to lie on her bed, letting her exhaustion seep out into the mattress. 

She thought of Valter again. She heard the sound of beating wings outside of her room, ruffling the foliage of the nearby trees, but she somehow suspected that it wasn’t a bird. It didn’t sound all that… avian, she felt. 

Eirika closed her eyes and she stifled a groan. She let her hand wander downwards as she thought of her tamed Goblin King. She had never done it before but if there was ever a night to try it, she reasoned, tonight was that night. Eirika thought of him all through it. She was gradual as she built herself up to a climax akin to a clock striking thirteen. And for that reason, her first orgasm felt of victory, too, just like her first kiss with Valter. It was sweet and enjoyable, taking her breath away and rewarding her, like a heroine, with well deserved rest.


End file.
